Rome is the greenest capital in Europe, with an urban green space equal to 35,5 % of the city’s area. In addition to this, there’s dozens of Renaissance and Baroque villas in the surrounding localities, built in the XVI and XVII centuries by aristocratic families who sought to escape from the bustling city and find relief from the high summer temperatures. Those villas perfectly incarnate the spirit of their era.
These Roman villas feature rooms frescoed by the most important artists of their time, with images that celebrate the wonder of God’s creation and the Glory of the family. Their gardens are recreated with their parterres “all’italiana” the order, harmony and perfect proportions they believed God had created the Universe with. Today, still, they offer to the visitor a unique possibility to immerge themselves in a world that is long gone, but that has left indelible marks in our culture.
As Marco Martella says in his book Tornare al Giardino, the garden “awakens in us the lost, poetic feeling of the Sacred, offering us a place, within which we can find for a few moments – fleeting moments, of course, and maybe only dreamed, but perhaps for this reason even truer – a unity with the world.”
Rome is the greenest capital in Europe, with an urban green space equal to 35,5 % of the city’s area. In addition to this, there’s dozens of Renaissance and Baroque villas in the surrounding localities, built in the XVI and XVII centuries by aristocratic families who sought to escape from the bustling city and find relief from the high summer temperatures. Those villas perfectly incarnate the spirit of their era.
These Roman villas feature rooms frescoed by the most important artists of their time, with images that celebrate the wonder of God’s creation and the Glory of the family. Their gardens are recreated with their parterres “all’italiana” the order, harmony and perfect proportions they believed God had created the Universe with. Today, still, they offer to the visitor a unique possibility to immerge themselves in a world that is long gone, but that has left indelible marks in our culture.
As Marco Martella says in his book Tornare al Giardino, the garden “awakens in us the lost, poetic feeling of the Sacred, offering us a place, within which we can find for a few moments – fleeting moments, of course, and maybe only dreamed, but perhaps for this reason even truer – a unity with the world.”
Testimonial
My family and I (wife and 3 kids) have been on multiple tours with Luciana over the past 5 years including tours of the Roman Forum and the Colosseum, the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica, the Domitilla Catacombs and Via Appia Antica, and Hadrian’s Villa and Villa d’Este (Tivoli). Each time we go on a new tour with Luciana it feels like we are reconnecting with an old friend. I recommend her wholeheartedly.