The Grotto of Diana will be restored at Villa d'Este, thanks to a collaboration with FENDI

The restoration of the Grotto of Diana of the Estense Garden in Tivoli will start in the coming months, thanks to the collaboration between theVilla Adriana and Villa d’Este Institute and FENDI. The intervention will be aimed at the full recovery of the legibility of the decorative cycle and the reopening of one of the places that most characterize the site. Particular attention will be paid to improving motor accessibility to the Grotto, as well as to the needs of people with visual, hearing and cognitive disabilities, through a dedicated route.

Located in a scenic spot of Villa d’Este, elected a UNESCO World Heritage Site back in 2001, the Grotto of Diana is a cruciform chambered nymphaeum located in the Passeggiata del Cardinale. Made between 1570 and 1572 by Paolo Calandrino probably inspired by Pirro Ligorio, the architect who designed the Villa and park, the room is dedicated to honest pleasure and chastity, personified in Diana, the huntress goddess and symbol of virtue. Inside are depicted mythological episodes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses along with Tritons, Nereids and Caryatids canefore. The entire surface of the cave is covered with rich and complex polychrome and polymateric decoration (stucco, glass paste, shells, glazed majolica, stone materials). Diana’s Grotto was an important role model, fundamental to the development of grottos and nymphaea in European gardens of the 16th and 17th centuries. Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este himself loved to walk in these places, as they contained an ideal synthesis of the main values of late 16th-century Mannerist culture.

“The overall conservative intervention,” said Andrea Bruciati, director of the Villa Adriana and Villa d’Este Autonomous Institute, “intends to ensure the protection of the property through work on the decorated surfaces but also on the adjacent structures and paths, for a full recovery of the legibility of the decorative cycle. The goal is the reopening to the public of a central junction of the visitor route and an architectural and decorative space essential to the understanding of the Villa d’Este itself.”

“It is an honor for FENDI to extend its Roman boundaries to the Villa d’Este, in Tivoli, recognized worldwide as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, an iconic place that represents a masterpiece of the Italian garden with a vast concentration of fountains and water features, an element strongly celebrated by FENDI,” said Serge Brunschwig, President and CEO of FENDI. “This initiative renews our commitment to the protection and enhancement of Italy’s cultural heritage, which in the past has led us to restore symbolic places in Rome to pass on beauty to future generations.”

The restoration is in line with the primary objectives of protection and enhancement of cultural heritage set by the director of the Villa Adriana and Villa d’Este Autonomous Institute, Andrea Bruciati, who strongly wanted this partnership with FENDI, already protagonist of similar interventions in the past, through the project of “FENDI for Fountains” with the restoration of various symbolic fountains of Rome, such as the Trevi Fountain, the Quattro Fontane Complex, the Acqua Paola Exhibit, the Moses Fountain, the Peschiera Fountain and the New Virgin Water Exhibit, up to the more recent Temple of Venus and Rome at the Palatine.

Photo Credit: VILLAE - Villa d’Este.

The Grotto of Diana will be restored at Villa d'Este, thanks to a collaboration with FENDI

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