ROMAN VILLAS 
details of the Villa Ludovisi ; but one need only compare 
the dates of his gardens with those of the principal 
Roman villas to see that he was the pupil and not the 
master of the great Italian garden-architects. 
The last great country house built for a Roman cardi- 
nal is the villa outside the Porta Salaria which Carlo 
Marchionne built in 1746 for Cardinal Albani. In spite 
of its late date, the house still conforms to the type of 
Roman villa suburbana which originated with the Villa 
Medici ; and it is interesting to observe that the Roman 
architects, having hit on so appropriate and original a 
style, did not fear to continue it in spite of the growing 
tendency toward a lifeless classicalism. 
Cardinal Albani was a passionate collector of antique 
sculpture, and the villa, having been built to display his 
treasures, is appropriately planned with an open arcade 
between rusticated pilasters, which runs the whole length 
of the fagade on the ground floor, and is continued by a 
long portico at each end. The grounds, laid out by 
Antonio Nolli, have been much extolled. Burckhardt 
sees in them traces of the reaction of French eighteenth- 
century gardening on the Italian school ; but may it not 
rather be that, the Villa Albani being, by a rare excep- 
tion, built on level ground, the site inevitably suggested 
a treatment similar to the French? It is hard to find 
anything specifically French, any motive which has not 
been seen again and again in Italy, in the plan of the 
Albani gardens ; and their most charming feature, the 
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