GARDENS OF ESTE AND GONZAGA PRINCES 
which fortunately still belongs to direct descendants 
of the ducal line of Visconti. The villa is a noble 
structure built by Ruggieri in the first years of the 
eighteenth century, the terraced gardens with their 
pleached alleys and bright parterres, their fishponds, 
arbours, and finely wrought iron gates, take us back 
to still earlier days, when the Sforza reigned in Milan 
and Leonardo the Florentine was the Duke’s chief 
engineer. 
In the early part of the sixteenth century, during 
the troubled reign of Beatrice’s sons, Maximilian and 
Francesco the Second, the gardens of Milan became 
famous as the meeting-place of many of those literary 
celebrities whose names live in Bandello’s novels. The 
witty friar waxes eloquent in his description of Ippolita 
Sforza and Scipio Atellano’s gardens, where the rival 
stars, Camilla Scarampi and Cecilia Gallerani, the 
Sappho of her day, recited their poems in the cool 
shade of a green pergola, and Lancinus Curtius and 
Antonio Fregoso discussed classical texts by the 
fountain side. Sometimes, as Bandello was telling one 
of his merry tales, the tramp of horses’ feet would be 
heard in the street, a chariot decorated with the finest 
gold and inlaid work, drawn by four splendid chargers 
in rich trappings, would appear at the palace doors, 
and cavaliers and ladies would hasten with joyful 
acclamations to greet the gracious lady who honoured 
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