Villa Farnèse

The Villa Farnèse , or, more precisely the Palate Farnese de Caprarola , is one of the best examples of villa rebirth, built for the Roman family of the Farnèse to Caprarola. The palate was one of the many residences seigneuriales built by Farnèse in their own fields. The preliminary draft is that of a defensive fortress entrusted to Antonio da Sangallo the Young person.

In 1559 the cardinal Alexandre Farnèse, modifies the preliminary draft, by maintaining however the plan pentagonal and the work management passes to Vignole. Construction is transformed into an imposing palate which becomes then the estival residence of the cardinal and his court.

Instead of the bastions of angles, the architect inserts vast open terraces on the surrounding countryside and cuts the hill with perrons in order to isolate the palate and at the same time, harmoniously to insert it with the surrounding territory, by opening a rectilinear road towards the center of the village located in lower part, in order to connect by this prospect the palate to the city, by making it become the center dominating. In the center of the residence a circular court in two plans opens whose superior is connected to the second by the monumental staircase the Scala Regia .

The Gardens of the farnesiani (bearing the same name of the garden of the family on the collar Palatino in Rome), a splendid example of Garden to Italian the of the late Rebirth, realized through a system of terraces joined with the walls even of the villa, in the ground from where construction emerges. Work for the garden started in 1565 with Giacomo of Duca, by using for the terraces the excavated material of the foundations of the Church of Gesù to Rome, is finished in 1630, under the direction of Girolamo Rainaldi.

Taddeo Zuccaro painted there frescos on the facts of the life of Farnèse which were made famous in the military career, or which could deserve other glories.

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