Undulating plays of the façade, between gardens and fountains

The building, in neoclassical style, consists of a large central block with three floors, enlivened on the façade by a great semicircular staircase; to this are added several annexes, such as the charming seventeenth-century chapel, the lemon house, the stables and various farmhouses serving as utility buildings.

Perhaps it was precisely the extremely visible position of the complex in the plain between the Tiber and Spoleto valleys that led its architect to make an original choice of fusion between the model of the urban villa and that of the suburban villa. In the urban villa, in fact, gardens are separated from the urban fabric by high walls, exactly as is the case here, almost as if to emphasise the difference between the surrounding agricultural context and the residential one, connected to leisure and otium.

The exterior of the villa is strongly characterised by the simultaneous presence of the types of garden most in vogue between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: in front of the villa, the ‘secret’ garden, protected by high walls, arranged on different levels, each adorned with fountains; at the rear, the Italian garden, in the form of an exedra; and finally the English park leading to a small open-air theatre.