Villa Farnese
Palazzo Farnese
Interesting facts
- Peruzzi's original fortress plan angled each face of the pentagon inward so defenders could rake attackers with fire from the centre and the corner bastions.
- Beneath the front terraces, a basement hollowed out of the tuff served as a covered carriage entrance in bad weather, held up by one massive central column.
- Besides the Scala Regia, four more spiral staircases rise around the courtyard, five in all, linking the villa's upper floors and gallery.
- The villa's five floors were each assigned a different function, from the guardroom-like base to the state rooms and the floors for courtiers and servants above.
- Niches between the paired columns of the round courtyard once held busts of Roman emperors, in a scheme reworking Bramante's House of Raphael in Rome.
- The great central loggia, now glazed, was the summer dining hall, named the Room of Hercules after its frescoes and fitted with a grotto-like fountain.
- The Flemish painters Bartholomeus Spranger and Joos van Winghe worked on the frescoes as assistants to Jacopo Bertoja.
- The cardinal's famous art collection eventually passed to Charles III of Spain, who moved it to Naples.
- In the 19th century the villa briefly served as the residence of the heir to the throne of the newly unified Kingdom of Italy.
- The casino and its gardens are today one of the official residences of the President of the Italian Republic.
Why it is worth it
Villa Farnese towers over the small town of Caprarola like a fortress, and that is exactly how it began. Its plan is a regular pentagon with corner bastions, set on a platform cut from the volcanic tuff of the Cimini hills, and the town's main street runs straight up the slope to its front terraces. Inside, the severe outer shell gives way to a circular arcaded courtyard and some of the richest Mannerist interiors in Italy.
The first owner of the estate, Cardinal Alessandro Farnese – later Pope Paul III – acquired it in 1504 and had Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and Baldassare Peruzzi design a pentagonal stronghold; its foundations were laid probably between 1515 and 1530. His grandson, also Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, decided to turn the half-built fortress into a country residence and in 1556 engaged Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola, fresh from building Villa Giulia for Pope Julius III. Work began in 1559 and Vignola directed it until his death in 1573. He kept the fortress geometry but placed a round courtyard at its heart, ringed with paired Ionic columns, and added the Scala Regia, a spiral staircase rising through three floors on pairs of columns and painted with frescoes by Antonio Tempesta.
The principal floor holds two matching suites of state rooms, one facing east for summer and one west for winter, each with its own walled parterre garden reached by a bridge over the moat. The decoration, planned by the cardinal's secretary Annibale Caro, celebrates the Farnese family; in the Room of Farnese Deeds the brothers Taddeo and Federico Zuccari painted the family's triumphs from floor to ceiling, and the Room of the World Map, finished in 1574, shows the known world beneath a vault of constellations. Beyond the formal gardens, a path through chestnut woods leads to a secluded casino with loggias, approached by a stepped water chain flanked by reclining river gods. The cardinal died in 1589 and the property passed to the Farnese dukes of Parma; today the villa belongs to the Italian state.
Getting there
The villa stands at the top of Caprarola, about 15 km south-east of Viterbo and roughly 50 km north-west of Rome. The nearest airport is Rome–Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci (FCO), about 58 km away in a straight line.
Plan your visit
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Nearby places
- Villa Lante 12.7 km · historic-garden
- Gardens of Bomarzo 18.1 km · sculpture-garden
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Villa Farnese, also known as Villa Caprarola, is a pentagonal mansion in the town of Caprarola in the province of Viterbo, Northern Lazio, Italy, approximately 50 kilometres (31 mi) north-west of Rome, originally commissioned and owned by the House of Farnese. A property of the Republic of Italy, Villa Farnese is run by the Polo Museale del Lazio. This villa is not to be confused with two similarly-named properties of the family, the Palazzo Farnese and the Villa Farnesina, both in Rome.
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