Villa d'Este

Listen for a moment before you look. Somewhere below you, water is falling, hundreds of streams at once. It hisses through stone mouths, drums into basins, and runs in narrow channels along the steps. The air on the terrace feels cooler than the street outside, and it smells of wet moss and cypress. You have just walked through a palace, but the real subject of this place is water. Everything here, the paths, the statues, the whole hillside, was arranged to make it move, splash and sing.

Welcome to Villa d'Este, on the edge of Tivoli, in the hills east of Rome. The man behind it was Cardinal Ippolito the Second d'Este. He came from one of the great noble families of Renaissance Italy, the rulers of Ferrara. His mother was Lucrezia Borgia, a name that still carries a long shadow. Ippolito was rich, cultured and very ambitious. More than once, he hoped to become pope. That prize never came to him. Instead, he built this.

The story begins in the middle of the sixteenth century. Ippolito was made governor of Tivoli, and he received an old monastery as his official residence. For a man used to the courts of Ferrara and France, it was a modest building. So he began to rebuild it. The monastery became a palace. And the steep, rough slope below it became one of the most ambitious gardens of the Renaissance.

To design it, the cardinal turned to Pirro Ligorio. Ligorio was a painter, architect and antiquarian, a man who loved the ancient world. He worked with engineers and hydraulic experts to solve the central problem. How do you bring enough water up here to feed hundreds of fountains? The answer was gravity. Water was diverted from the Aniene river, which runs through Tivoli, and from local springs. It flowed through tunnels and pipes, then dropped down the hillside.

Here is something many visitors miss. Almost none of the fountains you will see needs a pump. The pressure comes from the height of the land itself. The water enters near the top and falls from terrace to terrace. Each fountain uses the force of the one above. In a sense, the whole garden is one long machine, built from stone, slope and patience. When you stand at the bottom later, look back up and picture that journey.

Before you go down, take a moment inside the palace rooms. The walls and ceilings are covered in painted scenes. You will see landscapes, mythological stories and views of the villa itself. These frescoes were painted by teams of artists working for the cardinal. Notice how often the painted gardens echo the real ones outside the windows. The house and the garden were meant to talk to each other, room to terrace, picture to view.

Now follow the paths down. One of the first great sights is the Avenue of the Hundred Fountains. It is a long, straight walk with three channels of water running along one wall. Small spouts pour from carved shapes into the channels below. Look closely at the carvings. You will find eagles, lilies and little boats. The eagle and the lily are symbols of the Este family. Over the centuries, moss and ferns have grown thick over the stone, so the whole wall now looks green and soft.

At one end of this avenue sits the Oval Fountain. Water falls from above in a wide, curved sheet, like a curtain. Behind it, there is a walkway where you can stand and look out through the falling water. At the other end, you find a small model of ancient Rome, known as the Rometta, or little Rome. It shows the city in miniature, with a statue of Rome herself. It was a reminder that the cardinal saw himself as a man of the ancient tradition.

That love of antiquity has a darker side. Close to Tivoli lie the ruins of Hadrian's Villa, the country retreat of a Roman emperor. Ligorio explored those ruins, and many ancient statues and stones were taken from there to decorate this garden. Today we would call that looting. In the sixteenth century, it was seen as collecting. Many of those pieces were later sold or moved, so the garden you see is quieter than it once was.

Now for one of the great surprises. Find the Fountain of the Organ. This is a hydraulic organ, an instrument played by water. Moving water pushes air through pipes and turns a mechanism that plays a melody. In the Renaissance, visitors came from far away to hear it, and it was famous across Europe. Over time, the machinery stopped working. In recent decades it was restored, and at certain moments of the day it plays again. Ask the staff when, and do not miss it.

Below the organ, the water drops in a long cascade toward the Fountain of Neptune. This part looks old, but much of it is a twentieth century addition, built on the earlier design. In front of it lie long, still fish ponds. After all the noise of falling water, these pools feel calm. On a clear day, the cascades reflect in their surface. This is a good place to stop, turn around, and look back up the slope toward the palace.

The villa has a long life after the cardinal. It passed through different owners and fell into neglect for periods, then later passed to the Italian state. In the nineteenth century, the composer Franz Liszt stayed here. The sound of the fountains inspired one of his piano pieces, The Fountains of the Villa d'Este. In 2001, the villa and its gardens were added to the UNESCO World Heritage list. Its ideas about water gardens shaped gardens across Europe.

Before you leave, stand still once more and simply listen. Notice how the sound changes as you walk. Near the cascades, it is a roar. Along the Hundred Fountains, it is a soft, steady murmur. By the fish ponds, it is almost silent. That change was planned, more than four centuries ago, by people with no electricity and no pumps. As you climb back toward the gate, feel the cool air on your skin, and let the sound of the water follow you out.