ITALIAN GARDENS OF THE RENAISSANCE 
declared it to be the most beautiful which he had ever 
seen. One May evening, after the young Duchess 
Beatrice and her mother had left for Venice, Ercole 
took his son-in-law to spend the day at Belriguardo, and 
entertained him and his Milanese courtiers at a banquet 
in the gardens. 
“ I would not for all the world,” wrote the Moro to 
his wife, “ have missed seeing this place. For, in truth, 
I have never seen so large and fine a house and gardens, 
or one that is so well laid out and adorned with such 
excellent paintings. I do not believe there is such 
another villa in the whole world, at once so noble and 
spacious, and at the same time so thoroughly well- 
planned and comfortable. To say the truth, if I were 
asked to decide whether Vigevano, the Castello of 
Pavia, or this house were the finest palace in the world, 
the Castello must forgive me, for I would certainly 
choose Belriguardo.” 1 
But even the splendours of Belriguardo paled by the 
side of the new palace of Belvedere which Alfonso the 
First reared twenty years later on an island in the Po, 
just above the ancient fortress of Castel Tedaldo. A 
flight of marble stairs led from the water’s edge to a 
court turfed with the finest grass, surrounded by cut 
box hedges, with a superb fountain in the centre. 
Facing this grassy court stood the villa, an imposing 
building with porticos and colonnade flanked by lofty 
1 E. Motta, Giornale si. d. lett. Hal., vii. 387. 
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