page_title: Villa d'Este
section_title: The Villa in later years
hierarchical_section_title: Villa d'Este / History / The Villa in later years
context_page_description: The Villa d'Este is a 16th-century villa in Tivoli, near Rome, famous for its terraced hillside Italian Renaissance garden and especially for its profusion of fountains. It is now an Italian state museum, and is listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
context_section_description: With the death of Ippolito in 1572, the villa and gardens passed to his nephew, Cardinal Luigi (1538–1586), who continued work on some of the unfinished fountains and gardens, but struggled with high maintenance costs. After his death in 1586, it was owned by the Cardinal Deacons of the Sacred College, who did little to maintain villa. In 1599 it returned to the Este family with the nomination of Cardinal Alessandro d'Este (1538–1624). Alessandro had the energy and ambition of his ancestor and carried out a major renovation of the gardens and water systems, as well as building a new system of fountains in the lower garden. He also persuaded Pope Gregory XV to formally grant ownership of the villa to the Este family. His successors, the Dukes of Modena, made further additions to the gardens. Francesco I (1629-1641) restored many of the crumbling structures and began planting trees in the previously unshaded gardens. Cardinal Rinaldo I commissioned two new fountains by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in 1660–61. However, after 1695, the Este family was unable to support the high cost of maintaining the villa, which they rarely used and which produced no income. The villa went into a long decline. After 1751, the furnishings were sent to Modena, and the antique sculpture was gradually removed from the gardens and sold to collectors. In 1796, the House of Habsburg took possession of the villa, after Ercole III d'Este bequeathed it to his daughter Maria Beatrice, married to Grand Duke Ferdinand of Habsburg. It was largely neglected and was twice occupied by French soldiers, who took away much of the decoration that remained.
  Between 1850 and 1896, the villa was owned by Cardinal Gustav von Hohenlohe, who restored the dilapidated villa and the ruined and overgrown gardens, which now appealed to the romantic sentiments of the period. The villa once again attracted artists, musicians and writers. The composer Franz Liszt made several visits between 1865 and 1885, and wrote three pieces of piano music, two musical "threnodies" with the title "Aux cyprès de la Villa d’Este" and the character piece "Les jeux d'eau à la Villa d'Este," that depict the grounds.  They were placed in the "third year" of his Années de pèlerinage.  The latter includes some of the most influential evocations of the play of water ever written for piano.
  After the First World War, the villa was acquired by the Italian State, which began a major restoration in 1922. The villa was refurnished with paintings from the storerooms of the Galleria Nazionale, Rome. It suffered bomb damage in 1944 during World War II, and many of the walls were degraded in postwar years by environmental pollution, but campaigns of restoration and protection have managed to preserve intact the famous features of the villa and gardens. Jean Garrigue's volume of poems A Water Walk by Villa d'Este (1959) was inspired by the gardens. Kenneth Anger filmed Eaux d'Artifice among the water features of the garden.  The famous water organ, which had not functioned for many years, was restored and now plays again each day for visitors.
caption: Park of the Villa d'Este, Carl Blechen, 1830. The overgrown garden appealed to the Romantic imagination; today this same view is once again manicured.
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