Villa Lante al Gianicolo

Villa Lante al Gianicolo is a villa in Rome on the Janiculum Hill (Gianicolo). It is a summer house designed by Giulio Romano in 1520-21 for Baldassare Turini, as one of Romano's first independent commissions after the death of his master Raphael. The site was believed to have been that of the house of the Roman poet Martial, and the new villa was built on the same footprint as the surviving ruins, with a spectacular view facing Rome. Today, the property is owned by the Republic of Finland through Senate Properties, and the building houses the Institutum Romanum Finlandiae and the Embassy of Finland to the Holy See.

The villa is not to be confused with Villa Lante, Bagnaia near Viterbo, with famous Mannerist gardens, attributed to Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola.

The site is on the edge of the flat top of the Janiculum Hill, which here begins to slope steeply down terraces, and the large loggia built facing the view is on the same level as the front door on the other side of the house, which is reached by some gentle steps from the entrance courtyard. But below the loggia there is a considerable drop to the ground, and after a narrow garden terrace, another sharp drop to the next terrace below. To the side of the house a larger garden on a flat terrace also gives splendid views; unlike the house itself this is open to the public.

Turini was a Papal official (the "datary") who was a close friend of Raphael, and supervised the building of his tomb in the Pantheon, Rome. Raphael would no doubt have been the architect if he had lived longer, and may have made plans for it before his death. The building repeats many features of the Villa Madama, which was further advanced by Raphael's death, and also taken over by Giulio Romano.

Romano made the whole building suggest lightness and elegance to exploit the ridge-top position and overcome the rather small Roman footprint. The orders are delicate, with Tuscan or Doric columns and pilasters in pairs on the main floor, and extremely shallow Ionic pilasters above, whose presence is mainly conveyed by a different colour. Alternate loggia openings are heightened by arches above the entablature. Romano's willingness to play with the conventions of the classical orders is already in evidence; the Doric here has guttae but no triglyphs on its narrow entablature. The volutes of the Ionic capitals of the entrance facade are repeated in the window surrounds between them: "The canonic orders here begin to be treated visually as independent from their structural purposes, and this liberation offered the architect new expressive possibilities."

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Wikipedia