Discover Villa Farnese

The Villa Farnese stands directly above Caprarola, in the province of Viterbo some 50 km north-west of Rome, and dominates everything around it. It is a pentagon -- five sides, in reddish gold stone, with buttresses carrying the upper floors -- facing the wooded volcanic hills of the Monte Cimini. It is now owned by the Italian state and run by the Polo Museale del Lazio.

It should not be confused with two other Farnese properties of similar name in Rome, the Palazzo Farnese and the Villa Farnesina.

What was built on that defensive footprint is a massive work of the Renaissance and of Mannerism, and it was never a villa in the ordinary agricultural or pleasure sense. As the centrepiece of very large Farnese holdings, Caprarola was built to state the family's power, and its siting above the town says as much as its architecture does.

The shape was decided by a building that was never finished. Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, later Pope Paul III, acquired the estate at Caprarola in 1504 and had Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and Baldassare Peruzzi design a fortified rocca. Peruzzi's surviving plans show a pentagon with each face canted inward towards its centre, so that a force trying to scale the walls could be raked both from the centre and from bastions projecting at each corner angle, around a central pentagonal courtyard. The fortress foundations were built, probably between 1515 and 1530, and then the project stopped. Everything that followed sat on them.

A later Alessandro turned it into a house, and had a political reason to. His grandson, also Cardinal Alessandro Farnese and a man known for pushing his family's interests, planned to convert the half-built fortress into a country house. The Farnese had become unpopular with Pope Julius III, so withdrawing from the Vatican for a while was politic, and Caprarola -- on the family holding of Ronciglione, near Rome but not too near -- was the place to do it. He commissioned Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola in 1556, work began in 1559, and Vignola stayed on it until his death in 1573.

Vignola was the right choice and the circular courtyard is why. He had recently proved himself on the Villa Giulia outside Rome, built for Julius III, and had been heavily influenced by Michelangelo in his youth. Faced with a pentagonal foundation on a difficult and inhospitable site, he did not fight it: he set a circular colonnaded courtyard inside the five-sided block, and it is likely that the circle was itself determined by the necessities of the pentagonal plan rather than chosen freely.

The decoration was programmed, not commissioned piecemeal. The iconographic scheme was worked out by the humanists of Farnese's court, notably his secretary Annibale Caro, and executed by Taddeo and Federico Zuccari, Giacomo Zanguidi known as il Bertoia, Raffaellino da Reggio, Antonio Tempesta, Giacomo del Duca and Giovanni De Vecchi, with the Flemish painters Joos van Winghe and Bartholomaeus Spranger assisting Bertoia on the rooms he had been given to finish.

What left the building is as telling as what stayed. Alessandro died in 1589 and left his estates to his relatives, the Farnese Dukes of Parma. His renowned art collection eventually passed to Charles III of Spain and was taken to Naples, which is why the main villa is empty. In the nineteenth century the building briefly housed the heir to the throne of the newly unified Kingdom of Italy. The top of the garden at the casino has been altered since by Girolamo Rainaldi, and the casino and its gardens are now one of the homes of the President of the Republic.

Why is it a pentagon?

Because it was built on the foundations of an artillery fortress. Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and Baldassare Peruzzi designed a rocca for the site with each face canted inwards for raking fire and bastions at the corners; the pentagonal foundations were laid, probably between 1515 and 1530, and the villa that Vignola built a generation later had its overall form predetermined by them.

Did it really inspire the Pentagon in Washington D.C.?

Yes -- the Villa Farnese at Caprarola provided the model for it.

Is this the Palazzo Farnese?

No. The Palazzo Farnese and the Villa Farnesina are both in Rome and both belong to the same family; this is a third building, in Caprarola, and is also known as Villa Caprarola.

Can I visit the casino and the water-staircase garden?

Not as part of an ordinary visit. The casino and its gardens are today one of the homes of the President of the Italian Republic. The main villa, owned by the State, is open to the public.

Where did the furniture and the paintings go?

Alessandro Farnese died in 1589 and left the estates to the Farnese Dukes of Parma; his art collection eventually passed to Charles III of Spain and was brought to Naples. The main villa is empty.

Who painted the rooms?

Taddeo and Federico Zuccari did the Sala dei Fasti Farnesiani; Antonio Tempesta frescoed the Scala Regia; and il Bertoia, Raffaellino da Reggio, Giacomo del Duca and Giovanni De Vecchi worked elsewhere in the building, with the Flemish painters Joos van Winghe and Bartholomaeus Spranger assisting Bertoia. The programme behind all of it was devised by the humanists of the cardinal's court, notably Annibale Caro.