Villa Farnese

Walk slowly up the long, straight street of Caprarola and feel the slope pull at your calves. The road climbs without a single bend. At the top, the town seems to stop, and a huge wall of pale golden stone rises in front of you. It is not quite a castle, and not quite a palace. It has five sides, deep dry moats, and rows of tall windows. This is Villa Farnese, and the steady climb you just made was planned on purpose.

That straight street is one of the first surprises here. In the sixteenth century, the Farnese family did not only build a residence. They reshaped the town below it. An old tangle of medieval lanes was cut through to make a direct, rising axis. Anyone arriving would walk upward, with the building growing larger at every step. Look back down the street before you go in. The whole town works like an entrance hall for the villa.

The story begins with a fortress. In the early sixteenth century, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese planned a stronghold on this hill. He later became Pope Paul the Third. The architects Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and Baldassarre Peruzzi worked on the design. They chose a pentagon, a five-sided shape that military engineers of the Renaissance liked. Its angled walls were harder to attack. Building began, but the fortress was never finished in that first phase.

The next chapter belongs to the pope's grandson, also named Alessandro Farnese. He was a cardinal too, and one of the richest patrons of his age. From 1559, he asked the architect Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola to turn the half-built fortress into a grand country residence. Vignola kept the pentagon and the bastions. But he opened them up with loggias, windows and staircases. The result keeps the strength of a fortress, but it was made for comfort and display.

Notice how the outside still carries its military past. The moat is wide and deep, though it never held water for defence. Small bridges cross it to reach the house. The lower levels look heavy and closed. Higher up, the walls become lighter, with columns and broad openings. Your eye moves from a fortress at the base to a palace at the top. Many visitors feel that change before they can explain it.

Inside, the second surprise waits at the centre. The building has five sides, but the courtyard in its heart is perfectly round. Stand in the middle and turn slowly. Two levels of arcades circle around you, with arches resting on strong pillars. Sound behaves differently here. Footsteps and voices bounce softly off the curved walls. A circle inside a pentagon was a clever geometric puzzle, and Vignola solved it with great calm.

Now look for the great spiral staircase, often called the Scala Regia, the royal staircase. It winds upward around an open central shaft. Pairs of columns rise with it, turning as the steps turn. The ceiling and walls are covered with painted landscapes, garlands and the Farnese coat of arms. These paintings are associated with the artist Antonio Tempesta. The steps are shallow and wide. Legend has it that they were designed so a rider could climb on horseback, but treat that as a popular tale.

The main floor holds the painted rooms, and here the Farnese told their own story. Much of the decoration is by the brothers Taddeo and Federico Zuccari and their workshops. One great hall shows the deeds of the Farnese family. Popes, battles, marriages and treaties fill the walls. These scenes were political advertising in paint. They told every guest that this family stood close to the centre of European power.

The room many people remember most is the Room of the World Map. Its walls show large painted maps of the known continents of the time. Look closely at the coastlines. Some shapes look familiar, and others look strange, because they show what Europeans believed about the world in the late sixteenth century. Then look up. The ceiling shows the heavens, with the constellations painted as figures from myth. Earth below, sky above — the whole cosmos in one room.

Other rooms carry quieter themes. Some celebrate the seasons, some show stories from the Bible, and some show Greek and Roman myths. Take time with the small panels and borders, not only the large scenes. Painters filled the corners with birds, fruit, small animals and tiny landscapes. These details are easy to miss when you hurry. They show how much daily work went into each ceiling, by many hands over many years.

Behind the villa, the mood changes again. Bridges lead across the moat into formal gardens laid out in square sections. Further up the hill, past a stretch of trees, there is a smaller garden house, often called the Casino or the pleasure palace. It is linked with the architect Giacomo del Duca. A long stepped water channel, a water chain, runs down toward it. Carved stone figures stand along the terraces and look out over the paths.

This upper garden was a place to escape the formal life of the main house. The cardinal and his guests could walk up into cooler air, among fountains, hedges and stone. Listen for running water and for birds in the trees. Today, parts of the gardens may be open only at certain times or with a guide, so ask at the entrance. In the twentieth century, the villa came under the care of the Italian state.

Before you leave, stand again at the top of the long street and look down over Caprarola. Beyond the rooftops, the Cimini Hills roll away in green waves, and the Lake of Vico lies not far away. Think of the people who climbed this road more than four centuries ago, looking up at the same golden walls. The stone is warm, the street is still straight, and the view still runs downhill — exactly as it was planned.