Modern Landscaping Lessons From A Historic Italian Garden
On a trip to Villa d’Este—a fountain-strewn, Renaissance-era estate outside Rome—our writer learns the secrets to crafting a truly immersive garden.
On a trip to Villa d’Este—a fountain-strewn, Renaissance-era estate outside Rome—our writer learns the secrets to crafting a truly immersive garden.
It seems as if I have always known of the Villa d‘Este, the celebrated Renaissance villa and adjoining gardens northeast of Rome, but until this spring I really didn’t know much about it. I was dimly aware of the complex’s influence on landscape design, especially the fountain-rich, terraced gardens behind the frescoed house, but I couldn’t really work up a picture in my mind. Then, during a trip to Rome this spring, I decided to find out what the five-hundred-year-old fuss was about and hailed a taxi on the Via Veneto in the early morning traffic.
Located in Tivoli, a playground for ancient and Renaissance Romans about 20 miles from the Colosseum, the Villa d’Este was the brainchild of Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este (1509–1572), son of Renaissance art patron and Duke of Ferrara Alfonso d’Este and his controversial wife, Spanish-Italian power player and putative poisoner, Lucrezia Borgia. These days, it is reached only after a rather dispiriting trip through the anonymous eastern suburbs and exurbs of contemporary Rome, which might as well be outside Rome, N.Y. Even the entrance to the complex is kind of sad, off a small-town square with a curious work of menacing public art. But then the jaw-dropping splendor begins.
The stately villa, whose wholly frescoed interiors are spectacular enough, is perched above the gardens, which swoop down over countless levels, crisscrossed by a skyscraper’s worth of staircases and punctuated by some 50 sculptural fountains that run the gamut from large to huge to building-size.
A technical marvel in its time—and a Unesco World Heritage site and museum today—the 11-acre site’s sunken gardens use gravity to turn the local Aniene River into a constant motor for fountains, pools and dozens of artificial waterfalls. The Villa d’Este relies on the basic building blocks of Renaissance garden design—evergreen trees and Italian stone—to frame and fashion the gurgling, rushing and sheer wetness of all that water, which is not only meant to be seen but heard, felt and even endured, splashing you in the face when you least expect it.
The gardens start with…a pause.
Between the house and the garden slope is a quiet vialone, or avenue, bordered by a low wall and punctuated by elevated ceramic pots. This allows the mind to catch its breath between the fabulous frescoes and the watery wonderland beneath.
I heard falling water before I saw it, then my eye traveled to the right, to the so-called Hundred Fountains, a lane along which grotesque masks shoot water into a trough. Then I descended to the Cypress Rotunda, a giant display of twisting trees, some dating back to the 17th century.
Down I went, to the long array of fish ponds, or decorative reflecting pools, which lead the eye up to the Fountain of Neptune and, beyond, to the Fountain of the Organ, which uses river water to power an actual organ.
Then up I went to the piazza-fronted Oval Fountain, whose mammoth cascade of water suggests a glistening glass curtain, and back down again to the Fountain of Diana, a surreal multi-breasted symbol of fertility. I was getting tired, and hot, and after breathing the heady aromas of the rose garden, I paused in the cool darkness of the Grottoes of the Sibyls.
As it turns out, I was supposed to get tired, said Michael Lee, a professor in the history of landscape architecture at the University of Virginia, and a fellow this spring at the American Academy in Rome. The gardens are dense in mythological imagery, and the need to hike up and down was meant to “re-enact the labors of Hercules,” he said. I was expected to get tired and wet and hot and to notice the sounds of the fountains increase from nearly musical to almost deafening.
“The Villa d’Este is meant to be immersive,” said Prof. Lee, engaging all our senses, while later western garden design, from the French formal variety to the English landscape version, became ever more visual.
I later asked landscape designer Adam Woodruff, in Marblehead, Mass., how a gardener of more modest means and acreage could make a plot immersive. In his own meadow-style garden he converted a circular zinc planter, about 3 feet in diameter, into a reflecting pool. By adding a bit of black dye formulated for the purpose, he made the surface mirrorlike, so that sky and flower stalks prettily echo off the water. Thirsty birds steadily supply bird song (and avian-safe mosquito larvicide keeps bugs from breeding there). The simple vessel serves as a strategic focal point in the loosely structured garden, which includes a number of grass species.
Feeding all the senses was but one of the lessons Villa d’Este offers the home gardener. Others include creating a buffer between your house and your garden. Don’t be afraid to add humor, or even a bit of the grotesque. Save a place among the plants for stones, water, a statue or two or even a whole fountain.
The spring morning at the complex had turned into an almost summery afternoon, but now the weather grew overcast and faintly fall-like. It was time to go back to Rome, wetter and wiser, with the reminder that great design—in a garden, as in a house—should be lived rather than just looked at.
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Lamborghini CEO Stephan Winkelmann has made it clear the company, which makes some of the fastest cars in the world, would not speed into the era of electrification.
“Our first steps in that (electrification) direction will be plug-in hybrids throughout the lineup,” he said in a 2022 interview with Penta. “This is all very easily welcomed at Lamborghini. The equations are easy. We always promise more performance than the generation before for all our cars, and we will do so while maintaining sustainability. By 2025, we will be able to cut our overall emissions by 50% with all of the hybrid models added.”
Proving Lamborghini and Winkelmann are as good as their collective word, the time of watts and volts arrived in Bologna, Italy, with the debut of the 2025 Lamborghini Urus SE. The first hybrid super-SUV from the proud Italian firm, which starts at $275,000 marries the familiar internal combustion specs of its growling engines with battery power looking not so much to save the planet as to propel vehicles across it with more alacrity.
The Urus SE is the first hybrid plug-in version of Lamborghini’s SUV, and it’s aimed to outperform its all-internal combustion rivals, such as the Aston Martin DBX707 and the Bentley Bentayga. The PHEV (Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle) Urus SE relies on an 800 CV hybrid powertrain, surpassing any previous Lamborghini SUV model in torque and power numbers.
The machine’s twin-turbo 4.0-litre V-8 engine is reengineered and partnered with an electric powertrain to produce 620 CV. For the uninitiated, CV is the abbreviation of Chevaux-Vapeur and is similar to horsepower. Usually, HP converts to just a little less than CV—at least allowing the automotive enthusiasts from the U.S. and Europe to get a traditional sense of vehicle power for gas-powered or hybrid vehicles without needing a conversion calculator.
To make a long engineering story as quick as the Urus SE, if you add together the internal contrition power plant and the e-motor, the final output is 800 CV. The result is a Lamborghini that cuts its emissions by 80% without sacrificing performance, comfort, or driving excitement.
The thinking process on when and how to release this plug-in hybrid began before the company’s 2021 pledge to cut CO2 emissions, says Stefano Cossalter, the Urus model line director.
“This plan gave momentum to a profound and constant research of opportunities and challenges involved in the transition to electrification,” Cossalter says. “The plan started in 2023 with the launch of the Revuelto [sold out into 2026], our first HPEV (high performance electrified vehicle), and continues with the launch of the hybrid version of our Super SUV Urus SE.”
Cossalter lays out that the slow and steady march to electrification will continue next year with the release of the Temerario, described by Lamborghini as the successor to the popular Huracan and “the first super sports car in the history of the … brand to be equipped with a V-8 twin-turbo engine paired with three electric motors.” Then, the automaker will look to the horizon for its introduction of the Lanzador, the company’s first BEV (battery electric vehicle) in 2028.
The hybrid version offers improved performance over the 100% gas Urus. A magnet synchronous electric motor located inside the SE’s eight-speed automatic transmission tied into the four-wheel-drive system can boost the V-8 engine, offering additional acceleration. Meanwhile, that motor can provide enough power to transform the Urus SE into a totally electric vehicle with a range of about 35 miles in EV mode.
With the new drive system noted, Lamborghini’s engineers could turn to performance specs. They built in a new, centrally located longitudinal electric torque vectoring system with an electro-hydraulic multi-plate clutch. That’s a lot of fancy tech talk to say the vehicle can throw power and grip back and forth between the front and rear axles wherever the onboard system senses it’s needed. A new electronic limited-slip differential on the rear axle helps give the Urus SE oversteering when needed. The end result is an SUV that packs the feel of a Huracan on the road.
That supercar feel in an SUV is the experience Lamborghini refuses to abandon in the Urus SE, Cossalter says.
“We didn’t come to compromises in the hybridisation process,” he says. “We wanted the Urus SE to preserve the DNA of the original project and enhance the experience for the driver. For those reasons, we decided not to downsize. We kept a V-8 engine with its strong character and voice, and then added some spice to the dynamic behavior by changing the all-wheel-drive architecture. The result is we have more power, more torque, more speed, more fun.”
As for external styling on the Urus, Lamborghini takes after its competition at Aston Martin or Ferrari by trying to make an SUV that looks as little like an SUV as possible. The profile is lowered, and the lines sweeping and tapering from nose to tail, as though Lambo’s in-house designers want to hide the size and functionality of an SUV inside the shape of the familiar Lamborghini supercars of the past.
However, driving the Urus does not feel much like a traditional Lamborghini supercar simply because the driving position is higher and more upright compared to, say, an Avantador that puts the driver’s backside close to pavement. Regardless of where one sits, the acceleration, noise, and tight handling lives in a Urus as happily as it does in any other Lambo.
As its first volume consumer step into the hybrid world, the Urus SE tells Italian supercar enthusiasts to keep the faith.
“The Urus SE points to the future with electrification while keeping its heritage intact,” Cossalter says.
This stylish family home combines a classic palette and finishes with a flexible floorplan
Just 55 minutes from Sydney, make this your creative getaway located in the majestic Hawkesbury region.