A very interesting guided tour in a jewel of the Renaissance, listed as UNESCO World Heritage Site, in Tivoli, near Rome! The Villa d’Este Tour is a pleasant walk through the artistic rooms of the Palace and its magnificent park and beautiful garden, rich with fountains and water features which are still largely functioning.
The tour of Villa d’Este begins at the entrance through the beautiful 15th century portal, immediately emerging into the charming Benedictine cloister.
From there, the tour will continue by going to the top floor of the building, visiting the Throne Room, the Cardinal’s Bedroom and the precious Palace Chapel, frescoed by Federico Zuccari and others with scenes from the life of the Madonna and figures of prophets and sibyls.
We will continue our guided tour returning to the cloister, where the Rooms of State and the guest quarters are located. We travel along the ambulatory of the Manica Lunga, a covered walkway providing access to the rooms. The rooms leading off this walkway are the most richly decorated rooms of the Villa, built by the main protagonists of late Roman Mannerism: Livio Agresti, Girolamo Muziano, Cesare Nebbia, Antonio Tempesta, Federico Zuccari and others.
From the Central Salon or the Salone della Fontana, the tour of Villa d’Este will continue into the Garden.
This is an articulated structure of terraces and slopes, which blends in beautifully with the surrounding landscape and the Renaissance building, providing a classic example of a 16th-century garden: a perfect blend of nature, architecture, sculpture, music, and the sound and movement of water.
We could admire garden fountains of a wide variety of shapes and sizes, many still perfectly accessible to visitors, as the Fontana dell’Ovato, the Cento Fontane, the Rometta and the Fontane dei Draghi.
We will also have the opportunity to listen to the subtle Renaissance melodies being emitted by the hydraulic organ of the Fontana dell’Organo, a masterpiece of Frenchman Claude Venard and one of the most celebrated attractions of Villa d’Este.
Finally, our tour ends when we return to one of the tree-lined avenues leading back to the building of the villa itself, from which we will then exit the complex.
