LANDSCAPE AND GARDEN IDEAS IN/FOR FLORIDA-LOOKING FOR IDEAS AROUND THE WORLD
The garden of Palazzo Ruspoli in Vignanello (Italy)
The castle of Vignanello was built on the ruins of an ancient Benedictine monastery. Given to Beatrice Farnese as a gift by Pope Clement VII in 1531, then passed to Ruspoli family. In '500 Antonio da Sangallo the Younger was commissioned to transform the castle into a chateau.
The villa has remained in the same family since the sixteenth century and now belongs to Princesses Claudia and Giada Ruspoli. When I visited the garden I had a pleasure to meet the Princess Claudia. Entering the palace and its rooms I felt catapulted to centuries behind. The exceptional care given to this place by Ruspoli family, has preserved it in a perfect state for centuries.
The garden of Palazzo Ruspoli is one of the best preserved historical gardens and considered one of the most beautiful Italian parterres.
The Garden of Greenery is a perfect rectangle space crossed by four avenues. Rows of clipped laurel ( Laurus nobilis) and boxwood (Buxus sempervirens) divide the garden into twelve sections. At each corner you can see a terracotta pot with lemon trees. The interior of each section is occupied by sculpted bushes that show initials of Ottavia Orsini (who married the count of Vignanello in 1574) and her sons.
Although its magnificent character and historical importance, the garden of Vignanello is charming and intimate with its perfect proportion, scent of roses and a myriad of little secret corners.
For sure one of the best gardens to visit if you happen to Italy. Vignanello is located only about 40 miles from Rome.
You can’t help feeling a bit like a princess while crossing the little drawbridge between the castle and the adjoining garden. A heavy, dark door separates the passage between the rather dark antechamber on the ground floor and the dazzling sunshine outside. You need a moment to realize that you are above a deep moat. I imagine it is still the original ninth-century one from when the monastery was built on the rock for the Benedictine monks.
At the end of the narrow bridge – two little moss-covered pillars guard the entrance to the garden. The first view is not the one recognized from the illustrations of the garden. The moment you cross the threshold, what are observed above all are the great holm oaks, with their somber green color, on the right of the straight little pathway continuing from the bridge, and the sequence of brilliant green hedges on the left, whose pattern it is however impossible to understand.
But the garden was not originally conceived with the idea of being
shown to crowds of people, but mainly for personal use. It was not the
intention to stupefy others, as in the case of Tivoli’s Villa d’Este,
but to be able to enjoy something unique and beautiful that is loved,
and to satisfy and follow one’s own passions.
That Ottavia Orsini
appreciated gardens and had many notions about them I do not have any
doubt. The daughter of that Vicino Orsini who created the Sacred Wood at
Bomarzo could not be otherwise.
Ottavia’s love not only led her
to provide the input for the birth of the splendid garden, but made her
interweave into it her love for her children. The initials of her three
sons, traced by law hedges, survive to this day.
To see the entire design of the parterre, with its 12 flowerbeds embroidered in the box trees and spelt out by the straight little paths, you have to go up into the Castle and look down from there. From below the perception is quite different.
It is lunchtime on a late June day and the sun sits perpendicularly overhead. I am struck by the stark contrast between the darkness beneath the holm oaks skirting the parterre and the luminous green of the hedges. It is a day when it is closed to the public and one of the gardeners is pruning the box tree, while another one must just have cut the grass in the vicinity as the strong smell of it pervades the air. The air lends its scent to the summer vacations of a lazy Sunday afternoon when only the little children still have the energy to run about and play. I can imagine Ottavia observing Gaetano, Vicino and Sforza as they run around between the low rosemary and sage shrubs while she is resting in the dense shade of the holm oaks. Today the parterre is a medley of viburnum, box shrubs, common laurel and bay; but in the very beginning only rosemary and sage were used. And in the course of time, due to the brevity of their lives, they were replaced. Their silvery-green foliage must have created an even more marked contrast with the little woods at the sides, and on hot summer days the whole Castle and perhaps also the surrounding village must have smelt of their aromatic oils.
The garden is not just the parterre. As all Renaissance gardens it consists of contrasts and surprises. Among the geometric, precise flowerbeds ancient terracotta vases can be seen with lemon trees with their twisted black branches. Maybe a bit too closely pruned, but in any case with a few yellow fruits here and there.
Under the untidy holm oaks, in the cool shadows – more vases with big hydrangeas weighed down with their light blue, pink or white flowers. Vases placed, seemingly in a haphazard manner, on old pedestals bearing the Vignanello coat-of-arms. The same crest with the six hills and the grapevines which can also be seen impressed on some of the vases.
On the south-eastern side of the garden, under the holm oaks – a terrace. I believe I can remember some views on the Web, of the terrace transformed for a feast, into what seemed to be a highly-colored, sumptuous Eastern loggia awaiting the new Scheherazade.
Further east, after a row of other vases with lemons being warmed by the sun – the surprise lower down, under the high wall supporting the upper garden – another parterre, that of Ottavia’s secret garden. Long and narrow, designed with very low hedges inside which there are clusters of roses and irises. Three sides of the garden are bounded by high walls, while the one to the south is separated from the town houses by a tall trellis, covered all over by climbing roses.
Quite a while goes by before I manage to make out the passage to reach the lower garden. And what a passage! Perhaps on the days when it is open to the public the little gate is open, but today it is closed. So then I decide to venture to the adjacent turret. There, a steep, narrow winding staircase takes me down to the lower level. Rapunzel’s Tower - the silly thought crosses my mind and makes me chuckle. Yes, in this garden it is definitely impossible not to feel a bit like a princess.
The only pity is the faded roses. The secret garden must be a real jewel in May/early June. At this time the prevailing color is green. Since it is not a visiting day, as for the upper garden, the fountain is not flowing.
I decide to go all the way through the garden to the very end, in any case. In such places you never know what surprises might be in store for you. And in fact in the high supporting wall, the one under the big oaks up above – one, two, no – three openings. Dazzled by the sunshine I am unable to understand what there is inside, and two years ago, when I was visiting the Castle garden, my cellphone did not yet have an attached torch, so I decided to take snaps with flashes and so, for a moment, I succeeded in seeing inside the grottoes. Structures of big vertical and horizontal wheels assembled together appear first in the light of the flashes and then in the photos. Some seem to be of stone, others of old blackened wood. Inside the grotto your eyes begin to become accustomed to the dark and the odd structures take shape. They remind me of old millstones for grinding the corn. But there is no water here, nor any wind, and so I imagine they used to make use animals to move the heavy grindstones. In the other grotto there is a sort of big “chute” again with the six hills of the Vignanello coat of arms carved in it.
Later, when with the permission of Princess Claudia, I go up to the second floor of the castle to take photos of the parterre from above, I try to question the young lad accompanying me, but I do not manage to get anything other than what I had already imagined – they were millstones. I had a hundred questions to ask but they were not yet properly formulated in my mind after this feast of wonders. Nor did I want to take too much advantage of the Princess’s courtesy. I will look them up later in books – I think. An incorrect thought, as I was to discover later, because on the gardens of Vignanello Castle, apart from a few notions on its construction it seems impossible to find more detailed information. So my questions remain mute ones; perhaps one day, when I return there, I will succeed also in finding the answers. But then I will come dressed in a long romantic dress. You cannot feel yourself fully a princess wearing a pair of old jeans and with sneakers on your feet.
