House and Garden

A couple of years ago a TV gardening programme at home in Australia featured a segment on the Villa d'Este,  a huge villa in Tivoli, about an hour and a half from the centre of Rome.  The villa itself was not the focus of the show, rather it was the magnificent multi-level water gardens.  Despite not really being a "gardening person" I was fascinated and made a mental note to see them for myself one day.  On previous visits to Rome, I didn't have the opportunity to go out to Tivoli (read: I couldn't be bothered travelling on public transport in the middle of summer to see a couple of fountains).

Yesterday, we caught a bus to the train station, then a train to another bus stop, then a bus to the outskirts of Rome, all in the hope that it would be worthwhile and that what I recalled seeing a couple of years ago in a 10-minute TV show segment would be worth seeing in "real life". 

I'm a big-picture person, while David is more focused on details.  Consequently, I didn't know exactly how to get to Tivoli (David worked it out), where to buy tickets for the various forms of public transport (thank you Google - but more on that in a moment), specifically how long it would take point-to-point, how we would know we had arrived at Villa d'Este, whether we could see Hadrian's Villa on the same trip (not really, no) or how to get back to Rome afterwards (thanks, David).

After the bus ride to Colosseo, to catch the train to Ponte Mammolo, you have to exit the station by going downstairs and then upstairs on the other side, where you will find a pizza shop selling (obviously) bus tickets to Tivoli.  You'll thank me one day for this valuable piece of information, when you want to go there yourself.  The pizza shop is the key to it all. Google probably won't tell you that.  Prego.  You're welcome.

We missed the stop for Villa d'Este, but not by tooooo much, and only had to walk back about 500 metres (uphill...).  I shouldn't have expected the driver to announce the stop - what was I thinking?  Thank goodness I didn't wait any longer to shuffle down to the front of the bus and broach the all-important question of the driver, or we would still be walking back (probably from Florence).

The villa itself is huge and has lovely painted frescoes on the ceilings, but there isn't a stick of furniture in any of the rooms (and there are a LOT of rooms).  To be blunt, it was a bit boring.  Then we went outside.

It was spectacular.  You should go there.  These photos only show a few aspects of the gardens, which are very extensive and afford a magnificent view over the countryside beyond the villa.

If the Palace of Versailles near Paris had these gardens, it would be the perfect combination of fabulousness.  Perhaps you can't have everything.  Oh, wait!  Yes, you can.  You can have Schloss Belvedere in Vienna.

D1