THE VILLA CHIGI 
ROME 
PLATES 86, 87, 88 
UT four miles beyond the Porta Salaria, on the Campagna, is the Villa 
Chigi, one of the very few of the smaller Roman villas that still remain 
untouched by modern improvements and the speculative builder. We pass 
on our way many remains of villas that even as late as the first half of the 
nineteenth century retained their old-world charm. Here and there some 
quaint courtyard or parterre garden, or fine entrance gateways erected in the 
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—as that for example belonging to the 
Villa Porta. One looks forward to the day—perhaps not very far distant—when a restoration 
of some of these villas might be made, and 
instead of the houses that to-day arise, in all 
the glory of the ‘ new art,’ outside the walls 
of Rome, we may see a return made to the 
quiet stately villa of the seventeenth century. 
It is interesting, therefore, to put on 
record a plan of the Villa Chigi (Plate 86), 
which, although surveyed in 1806, is in 
exactly the same condition to-day. It is a 
combination of farm and villa, and has a 
pleasing air of comfort about its simple 
architecture. 
The casino is a low oblong house, quite 
Tuscan in appearance, with broad overhang¬ 
ing eaves. From the entrance gateway a 
long vista is obtained right through the 
house, across the parterre, and down a long 
shady alley. North and south of the casino 
is the garden, laid out in regular plots sur¬ 
rounded by low hedges of box, forming a series of delightful little flower gardens. At either end 
is a little bosco, with here and there a statue or term. Long alleys extend upon either side 
(i°5) 
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