House^Garden 
V o 1 . II AUGUST, 1902 No. 8 
A LETTER TO PLINY THE YOUNGER, 
RELATING TO THE VILLA CASTELLO, ON CAPRI 
My Dear Pliny : 
OUR letters to your friends Gallus, 
Domitius and others indicate so keen an 
interest on your part in villas and gardens, 
that “ 1 am persuaded you will hear with as 
much pleasure as I shall take in giving it,” 
a description of the Villa Castello. 
You will remember, before you began the 
study of Stygian villas some eighteen cen¬ 
turies ago, that as you looked across the Gulf 
of Naples from the brilliant Baiie, your eyes 
were pleas¬ 
antly arrested 
by the serra¬ 
ted outlines 
of the island 
of Capri, and 
I doubt not 
that your in¬ 
terest in such 
things may 
have led you 
to cross the 
bay and ex¬ 
amine the 
twelve villas 
there which, 
so your friend 
Suetonius in¬ 
forms us, were 
inhabited a 
century before 
your time by Tiberius, the able predecessor 
of your friend and lord Trajan. You may 
even have seen the auspicious ilex which, by 
reviving from apparent death on the first 
approach of the divine Augustus, so pleased 
him with this happy omen, as to induce him 
to effect an exchange of his island of Ischia 
for this more fortunate place ; and like him, 
you may have been entertained by the 
athletic diversions of the Capri youth on 
the field which still remains the only level 
place on the island. The neighboring islet 
frequented by some of his court which he 
called the “Abode of the Idlers” is still 
there, but his amiable epithet might now be 
extended to the whole of the larger island,— 
at any rate so far as the foreign residents 
are concerned. 
If you were 
to return in 
this year 
of Rome 
MMDCLV, 
you would 
on landing see 
the crest of 
the saddle of 
the island, 
some five 
hundred feet 
above the sea, 
crowned b y 
the irregular 
roof line of 
the village,— 
for it was 
moved to this 
more defen¬ 
sive position 
in those centuries of disorder, the sight of 
which you were happily spared. Toward the 
western end, you would see a white building 
superimposed on three great arches, with a 
round tower and curving steps at one corner. 
This is the Villa Castello ; but to reach it 
you must proceed by a winding carriage road 
Villa 
Ca&tlllo 
A VIEW OF CAPRI FROM BARBAROSSA 
343 
