Villa Kérylos is an ancient Greek house completed on the French Riviera in 1908. Classical scholar Théodore Reinach and architect Emmanuel Pontremoli modelled it on the noble villas of second-century BC Delos, recreating their mosaics, frescoes, courtyards and furniture with archaeological seriousness. Every room received a Greek name, and reproductions of ancient chairs were commissioned from Parisian cabinetmakers.
The Vittoriale degli Italiani is Gabriele D’Annunzio’s nine-hectare monument to Gabriele D’Annunzio. Created above Lake Garda from 1921, it contains his darkened house, 33,000 books and thousands of objects arranged according to a private system of symbols and mottos. The entrance has separate waiting rooms for welcome and unwelcome guests; the dining room displays a tortoise that supposedly died from overeating. Outside are D’Annunzio’s aeroplane, a torpedo boat and the prow of the warship Puglia, transported in pieces on twenty railway carriages and rebuilt in the hillside.
Villa Santo Sospir is a house on Cap Ferrat transformed by a guest who did not know when to stop. In 1950, its owner Francine Weisweiller invited Jean Cocteau to stay for a week. One afternoon, he drew an enormous head of Apollo above the fireplace. Weisweiller approved, so Cocteau continued across the walls, doors and ceilings, filling the villa with mythological figures drawn in charcoal and pigments mixed with raw milk. He rejected the word frescoes, calling them tattoos applied directly to the house’s skin. Cocteau returned for more than a decade. The guest eventually left; the drawings did not.
Villa Lysis is a neoclassical fantasy built on a cliff above Capri by the French poet and aristocrat Jacques d’Adelswärd-Fersen. Forced to leave Paris after a scandal involving minors, Fersen settled on the island and completed his private retreat in 1905. Its severe columns and white façade conceal blue-tiled rooms, golden mosaics, terraces facing the Gulf of Naples and a basement chamber arranged around a marble altar. The villa was named after Plato’s dialogue on friendship. Above the entrance, Fersen added its less restrained dedication: Amori et Dolori Sacrum—sacred to love and sorrow.
The Villa Garzoni garden in Tuscany, climbs a hillside so steeply that it resembles stage scenery more than landscape.
The labyrinth at Villa Pisani was designed around 1720 by Girolamo Frigimelica. Nine concentric rings of boxwood and numerous dead ends surround a central tower topped by Minerva, goddess of wisdom—an optimistic choice for anyone still trying to reach her. Its design has remained largely unchanged for three centuries.
Villa Silvio Pellico is an eighteenth-century villa on a hillside outside Turin. In the late 1950s, Russell Page transformed its steep grounds into a formal garden of terraces, staircases, clipped hedges and reflecting pools, arranged to frame views across the Po Valley toward the Alps. Two enormous Lebanon cedars stand at its entrance, reportedly more than four centuries old.
It is girded by a remarkable Baroque garden and water works, with statuary (including a statue of aged and winged time carrying a cuboctahedron) and even a Boxwood labyrinth. Originally commissioned in 1669 by Zuane Francesco Barbarigo, the construction continued under Zuane's son, Gregorio Barbarigo, a Cardinal and future Saint, with designs by Luigi Bernini, brother of the famous Roman sculptor and architect. The Villa was at one time accessible by boat from Venice, and the exuberant entry portal has the poles used in the city to tie up gondolas. The portal is pseudo palace facade with a broken pediment sporting a statue of Diana the hunter in the center, flanked by her dogs. Once through the gate, paths lead through a series of fountains and garden features, including water games.
Villa Tritone is a historic villa located in Sorrento, Italy, overlooking the Bay of Naples.
The Villa Palagonia is a patrician villa in Sicily, Italy. The villa itself, built from 1715 by the architect Tommaso Napoli with the help of Agatino Daidone, is one of the earliest examples of Sicilian Baroque. However, its popularity comes mainly from the statues of monsters with human faces that decorate its garden and its wall, and earned it the nickname of "The Villa of Monsters".