Customer Reviews

The Villa D'Este at Tivoli

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The Villa D'Este at Tivoli is a simply gorgeous and well written book. Unfortunately, there just isn't enough of it to justify the price. The pictures are gorgeous, but there should be so many more of them, and while the history and black and white garden layouts are detailed and obviously carefully studied, the book focuses more on history and design than the overall beauty of the villa. This is a wonderful book. However, it is simply overpriced.

I have been studying garden books recently and I've regretted that most give you lots of pictures of the garden, but no overview. Many don't even have a basic diagram of the layout of the garden. This book describes one of the world's great gardens and provides a variety of diagrams, of the layout, on the topology, etc. I wish it had a few more color photos, but the lack of photos is more than made up for by the fact that this is the first book I have encountered that really undertook a detailed look at the thinking and the logic of the architect who created the garden. As with many Italian Renaissance gardens, there were layers of meaning and complex metaphors that went into the garden's design, as for example the movement from Ancient Rome to modern Christian Rome and the various paths to salvation. This book provides a fascinating look at the way the garden's architect conceptualized this wonderful garden.