Villa Cipriani, Asolo, Italy
A nymph in billowing white slips away from the villa, one bare leg extended midstride as she crosses the lawn to keep a rendezvous. The sensuous image catches her against a hillside spilling with flowers, then leaves the rest of the story to us.
She has chosen a lovely route.
At Hotel Villa Cipriani in Asolo, white chairs stand on a terrace below a low stone wall. Above the wall, thousands of small white blossoms tumble down the slope. Roses grow at its foot; dark trees rise behind them. A timber pergola extends across the top of the scene, its beams offering a glimpse of the sky beyond.
The garden’s composition is especially good from the chairs. The stone wall runs diagonally through the view, pulling the eye upward into the flowers. The pergola gives all that exuberant planting a strong horizontal line.
There is a pleasing exchange between the terrace and the hillside: pale upholstery against green lawn, delicate metal chair frames against rough masonry, cultivated roses beside a profusion that appears almost wild. It is easy to picture a long afternoon here.
Someone takes a chair with a view of the roses. Someone else walks beneath the pergola. Our nymph's sudden passage brings a little intrigue to this otherwise leisurely corner.
The villa itself dates to the 16th century and underwent substantial changes in the 18th. English poet Robert Browning bought it in 1889. Rupert Guinness, the second Earl of Iveagh, acquired the property in 1962 and engaged Giuseppe Cipriani, founder of Venice’s Harry’s Bar, to make it a hotel.
Its garden, like the house, has been shaped by successive owners. The question of who designed the garden has no single-name answer.
Historic Hotels Worldwide attributes the villa’s earliest formal gardens to unnamed architects of Andrea Palladio’s school. It credits Browning with introducing plants including roses, cypresses, laurels and oleander, and says an English-style garden was established after Guinness bought the estate.
No documented designer or photographer is readily identifiable for the particular corner in this photograph.
Be assured there is more to see beyond this scene. The hotel describes tulips in spring, jasmine in May, fragrant Osmanthus fragrans in September and persimmon trees brightening the colder months. The garden’s terraces also open onto views of the hills surrounding Asolo.
Yet this intimate corner makes a persuasive case for lingering: stone and timber give it shape, flowers soften every edge, and a woman in white has just hurried through, leaving us to wonder her mission.
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