LOMBARD VILLAS 
still discoverable. The villa, a stately pile built by 
Ruggieri in 1736, looks on a court divided from the 
highway by a fine wall and beautiful iron gates. Low 
wings containing the chapel and offices, and running at 
right angles to the main building, connect the latter with 
the courtyard walls ; and arched passages through the 
centre of the wings lead to outlying courts surrounded 
by stables and other dependencies. The house, toward 
the forecourt, has a central open loggia or atrium, and 
the upper windows are framed in baroque architraves 
and surmounted by square attic lights. The garden ele- 
vation is more elaborate. Here there is a central pro- 
jection, three windows wide, flanked by two-storied 
open loggias, and crowned by an attic with ornamental 
pilasters and urns. This central bay is adorned with 
beautiful wrought-iron balconies, which are repeated 
in the wings at each end of the building. All the 
wrought-iron of the Villa Visconti is remarkable for 
its elegance and originality, and as used on the ter- 
races, and in the balustrade of the state staircase, in 
combination with heavy baroque stone balusters, it is an 
interesting example of a peculiarly Lombard style of 
decoration. 
Between the house and the Naviglio there once lay 
an elaborate parterre de broderie, terminated above the 
canal by a balustraded retaining-wall adorned with stat- 
ues, and flanked on each side by pleached walks, arbours, 
trellis-work and fish-ponds. Of this complicated plea- 
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