The Casino Nobile, with its long and narrow floor plan, has only one main floor, a terraced loggia overlooking the Italian garden, in whose niches the statues of the emperors dialogue with the divinities in the Kaffeehaus in front of it, a porticoed exedra with serlianas that encloses the 18th-century garden, intended to house statues, bas-reliefs and pleasant lounges.
This vast architectural complex was completed in the mid-18th century by architect Carlo Marchionni (1702-1786) on an expanse of vine-covered countryside, levelled so to assure irrigation with slopes and terracing. Among the finest expressions of that antiquarian taste for which Rome became the main destination of the Grand Tour, the project for Villa Albani Torlonia was first intended as a location for the display of Cardinal Alessandro Albani’s (1692-1779) prestigious antiquarian collection inspired by the stimulating dialogue between the great engraver Giovan Battista Piranesi, cartographer Giovan Battista Nolli for the design of the garden, and the “father” of history of antique art, Johann Joachim Winckelmann who was the Cardinal’s librarian and confidant in the creation of his collection. The result of this exchange has been a narrative inspired to antique themes through “sensory itineraries” to educate viewers while admiring the view stretching for Monti Sibillini to Colli Albani. From the wood of tall trees and antique domestic pines, eight avenues of holm oaks lead to the large, geometrically ordered parterre designed with low boxwood hedges. Villa Albani Torlonia, Cardinal Albani’s dream of beauty and classical antiquity, has been preserved generation after generation by the passion for collecting cultivated by different generations of the Torlonia family that acquired the villa in 1866 increasing the garden collection and restoring the most important Cardinal residence of the 18th century.
Highlights
The Italian formal garden
At the centre of the parallel flowerbeds there is the Fontana dei Facchini, a large basin held by four Atlases. The rose-studded box pattern climbs up to the lateral esplanades that once were vineyards, with Baroque fountains on one side and an herb garden on the other with vases of citrus trees and an orchard today remembered by large Lebanese cedars.
The "Kaffeehaus"
The Casino Nobile, with its long and narrow floor plan, has only one main floor, a terraced loggia overlooking the Italian formal garden, in whose niches the statues of the emperors dialogue with the divinities in the Kaffeehaus in front of it, a porticoed exedra with serlianas that encloses the 18th-century garden, intended to house statues, bas-reliefs, and offering a setting to pleasant leisurely occasions.
The temple ruins
In keeping with the English landscape garden trend, on one side of the park there are the fake ruins of a small temple made assembling ancient fragments, a divertissement destined to be a model for other great Roman villas restored during the neoclassic age.