ITALIAN GARDENS OF THE RENAISSANCE 
up, laid out on architectural lines, with broad terraces 
and flights of steps, and adorned with ancient sarco- 
phaghi and statues, with frescoed summer-houses and 
fountains of bronze and marble. Scholars and poets, 
merchants and princes, vied with Cardinals and Papal 
officials in making gardens—alike in the heart of the 
city and in its immediate neighbourhood. Cardinal 
Grimani, whose house at the foot of the Capitol— 
now the Palazzo Venezia—was only second in size 
and splendour to the Cancelleria, had a lawn of the 
finest and greenest grass in the court of his palace, 
with a fountain in the centre, surrounded by laurel 
and orange bowers and avenues of cypress, “ a thing,” 
wrote Pesaro, “truly marvellous to behold.” Close 
by, the terraced gardens of the Colonna Palace stretched 
up the steep slopes of the Quirinal, with the colossal 
fragment of the Temple of the Sun, its gigantic pillars 
and sculptured cornice towering into the skies. Here, 
in the summer of 1526, when the plague was raging 
in Rome, Isabella d’Este and her lively maidens spent 
the hot July days and received their chosen guests “ in 
this most beautiful garden,” where they enjoyed them¬ 
selves so much that they seldom cared to drive out 
in the chariot, and, as the Marchesa told her son, pre¬ 
ferred not to run any risks. 
On the site of the gardens of Sallust, near the 
Acqua Virgo, were the “ Horti Colotiani ,” where 
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