ITALIAN VILLAS 
front; and the roof of this lower story forms at each end 
a terrace level with the first-floor windows. These 
terraces are adorned with two curious turrets, resting 
on baroque basements and crowned by swallow-tailed 
crenellations — a fantastic reversion to medievalism, 
more suggestive of ‘'Strawberry Hill Gothic” than of 
the Italian seventeenth century. 
Orazio Olivieri and Giovanni Fontana are said to 
have collaborated with Giacomo della Porta in design- 
ing the princely gardens of the villa. Below the house 
a series of splendid stone terraces lead to a long tapis 
vert , with an ilex avenue down its centre, which 
descends to the much-admired grille of stone and 
wrought-iron enclosing the grounds at the foot of the 
hill. Behind the villa, in a semicircle cut out of the 
hillside, is Fontana’s famous water-theatre, of which 
Evelyn gives a picturesque description: “Just behind 
the Palace . . . rises a high hill or mountain all overclad 
with tall wood, and so formed by nature as if it had 
been cut out by art, from the summit of which falls a 
cascade . . . precipitating into a large theatre of water. 
Under this is an artificial grot wherein are curious 
rocks, hydraulic organs, and all sorts of singing birds, 
moving and chirping by force of the water, with several 
other pageants and surprising inventions. In the centre 
of one of these rooms rises a copper ball that continually 
dances about three feet above the pavement, by virtue 
of a wind conveyed secretly to a hole beneath it ; with 
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