The Italian Formal Garden 
learn from descriptions made familiar in the letters of Cicero 
and Pliny. These picture extensive domains, terraced, graded, 
embanked, balustraded, refreshed with fountains, adorned with 
every kind of edifice for ornament and rest, and beautified with 
every variety of foliage of trees, vines and shrubs. They pre¬ 
sent the counterpart of almost every feature characteristic of 
the Italian villa gardens of the sixteenth century. How com¬ 
plete and perfect the modern reproduction could be is evi¬ 
denced by the famous Villa Barberini at Castel Gondolfo, 
sixteen miles southeast from Rome, which Lanciani considers 
not only the finest he has ever seen, “but also (to quote his 
own words) the one which comes nearer than any other to the 
type of an ancient suburbanum. ... Its general plan and 
outline follow precisely the plan and outline of the glorious 
villa of Domitian. . . . The ancient ruins, the foundation 
walls of the huge terraces, the nymphsea and other remains, 
are so completely concealed and screened by a thick growth 
of ivy, ferns and other evergreens, that one feels, more than 
sees, the antiquity of the place. Bv a singular coincidence no 
tree, no shrub, no flower, no bud that is not purely classic 
seems to be allowed to live in this magnificent domain. No 
flower is allowed to diversify the emerald green of the lawns, 
except the classic rose and violet, and to make the illusion 
more perfect, flocks of peacocks have selected the groves of 
this villa for their abode.” * The Villa Pia in the Vatican gar¬ 
dens is another excellent reproduction in modern dress of the 
Roman conception of a villa of modest dimensions. Not only 
in Rome, but scattered also throughout central Italy, and along 
the Ray of Naples, were innumerable remains of antique villas, 
overgrown with ivy and weeds, but awaiting only the touch of 
the artist to bloom anew in fresh loveliness ; their terrace- 
walls and stairs rebuilt, their water courses and fountains again 
musical with running water, their thickets trimmed, and flower¬ 
beds once more blossoming on their terraced levels. 
These ancient gardens were extremely formal. No plant 
was allowed to grow uncontrolled. Trees were pruned, clipped, 
trained and trimmed into the semblance of any and every form 
except that of tree : a species of art called topiary work , which 
was revived in the Renaissance and carried to extremes by the 
gardeners of Holland and England in the seventeenth and 
* Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Excavations, pp. 279-280. 
