ITALIAN VILLAS 
Begun before 1 540 by the Cardinal Bishop of Cor- 
dova, the villa became the property of Cardinal Ippolito 
d’Este, son of Alfonso I of Ferrara, who carried on its 
embellishment at the cost of over a million Roman 
scudi. Thence it passed successively to two other 
cardinals of the house of Este, who continued its 
adornment, and finally, in the seventeenth century, was 
inherited by the ducal house of Modena. 
The villa, an unfinished barrack-like building, stands 
on a piazza at one end of the town of Tivoli, above 
gardens which descend the steep hillside to the gorge 
of the Anio. These gardens have excited so much 
admiration that little thought has been given to the 
house, though it is sufficiently interesting to merit 
attention. It is said to have been built by Pirro Ligo- 
rio, and surprising as it seems that this huge featureless 
pile should have been designed by the creator of the 
Casino del Papa, yet one observes that the rooms are 
decorated with the same fantastic pebble-work used in 
such profusion at the Villa Pia. In extenuation of the 
ugliness of the Villa d’Este it should, moreover, be 
remembered that its long facade is incomplete, save for 
the splendid central portico ; and also that, while the 
Villa Pia was intended as shelter for a summer after- 
noon, the great palace at Tivoli was planned to house a 
cardinal and his guests, including, it is said, “a suite of 
two hundred and fifty gentlemen of the noblest blood 
of Italy.” When one pictures such a throng, with their 
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