VILLAS NEAR ROME 
courtyard, with fountains in the usual rusticated niches. 
To the right of this court is another, flanked by the 
splendid loggia of Vignola, with the Borghese eagles 
and dragons alternating in its sculptured spandrels, 
and a vaulted ceiling adorned with stucchi — one of the 
most splendid pieces of garden-architecture in Italy. 
At the other end of this inner court, which was for- 
merly a flower-garden, Giovanni Fontana, whose name 
is identified with the fountains of Frascati, constructed a 
theatre cT eau, raised above the court, and approached 
by a double ramp elaborately inlaid in mosaic. This 
ornate composition, with a series of mosaic niches sim- 
ulating arcaded galleries in perspective, is now in ruins, 
and the most impressive thing about Mondragone is the 
naked majesty of its great terrace, unadorned save by a 
central fountain and two tall twisted columns, and look- 
ing out over the wooded slopes of the park to Frascati, 
the Campagna, and the sea. 
On a neighbouring height lies the more famous Villa 
Aldobrandini, built for the cardinal of that name by 
Giacomo della Porta in 1598, and said by Evelyn, who 
saw it fifty years later, “to surpass the most delicious 
places ... for its situation, elegance, plentiful water, 
groves, ascents and prospects.” 
The house itself does not bear comparison with such 
buildings as the Villa Medici or the Villa Pamphily. In 
style it shows the first stage of the baroque, before that 
school had found its formula. Like all the hill-built 
villas of Frascati, it is a story lower at the back than in 
