ROMAN VILLAS 
of Cardinal Colonna nearly destroyed it by fire ; and, 
without ever being completed, it passed successively into 
the possession of the Chapter of St. Eustace, of the 
Duchess of Parma (whence its name of Madama ), and 
of the King of Naples, who suffered it to fall into com- 
plete neglect. 
The unfinished building, with its mighty loggia stuc- 
coed by Giovanni da Udine, and the semicircular arcade 
at the back, is too familiar to need detailed description; 
and the gardens are so dilapidated that they are of in- 
terest only to an eye experienced enough to reconstruct 
them from their skeleton. They consist of two long 
terraces, one above the other, cut in the side of the 
wooded slope overhanging the villa. The upper terrace 
is on a level with Raphael’s splendid loggia, and seems 
but a roofless continuation of that airy hall. Against 
the hillside and at the end it is bounded by a retaining- 
wall once surmounted by a marble balustrade and set 
with niches for statuary, while on the other side it looks 
forth over the Tiber and the Campagna. Below this 
terrace is another of the same proportions, its retaining- 
wall broken at each end by a stairway descending from 
the upper level, and the greater part of its surface taken 
up by a large rectangular tank, into which water gushes 
from the niches in the lateral wall. It is evident from 
the breadth of treatment of these terraces that they are 
but a fragment of the projected whole. Percier and 
Fontaine, in their “ Maisons de Plaisance de Rome” 
83 
