Villa Pia
This view is of the Casina Pio IV (or Villa Pia), a patrician villa in the Vatican City which is now home to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of St Thomas Aquinas.
In the summer of 1982 during a tour of the Vatican's museums, an open window in the Gallery of Maps gave me the opportunity to take this shot - I hadn't realised the Vatican had gardens until this point, although it turns out that about half of the city's 121 acres are gardens. Compared with the hot dusty dry streets of Rome we'd been walking through, this was a true little oasis.
The predecessor of the present complex structure was begun in the spring of 1558 by Pope Paul IV in the Vatican Gardens, west of the Belvedere Courtyard. Paul IV commissioned the initial project of the 'Casina del Boschetto', as it was originally called, from an unknown architect; the first mention of the single-storey building can be found on 30 April 1558.
Upon Paul IV's death on 18 August 1559, Pope Pius IV took on the project, which had not yet been completed, and, turning to Pirro Ligorio, improved it. The complex, as it was completed in 1562, comprised an elliptical courtyard, two free-standing portals, and the loggia with its fountain. Rich sculptural stuccos, once supplemented by some 50 ancient Roman sculptures, enliven the exterior. A team of at least six major painters frescoed the interiors.
Pope Pius XI, the founder of the current Pontifical Academy of Sciences, made the Villa the Academy's current headquarters in 1936.
Villa Pia
This view is of the Casina Pio IV (or Villa Pia), a patrician villa in the Vatican City which is now home to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and the Pontifical Academy of St Thomas Aquinas.
In the summer of 1982 during a tour of the Vatican's museums, an open window in the Gallery of Maps gave me the opportunity to take this shot - I hadn't realised the Vatican had gardens until this point, although it turns out that about half of the city's 121 acres are gardens. Compared with the hot dusty dry streets of Rome we'd been walking through, this was a true little oasis.
The predecessor of the present complex structure was begun in the spring of 1558 by Pope Paul IV in the Vatican Gardens, west of the Belvedere Courtyard. Paul IV commissioned the initial project of the 'Casina del Boschetto', as it was originally called, from an unknown architect; the first mention of the single-storey building can be found on 30 April 1558.
Upon Paul IV's death on 18 August 1559, Pope Pius IV took on the project, which had not yet been completed, and, turning to Pirro Ligorio, improved it. The complex, as it was completed in 1562, comprised an elliptical courtyard, two free-standing portals, and the loggia with its fountain. Rich sculptural stuccos, once supplemented by some 50 ancient Roman sculptures, enliven the exterior. A team of at least six major painters frescoed the interiors.
Pope Pius XI, the founder of the current Pontifical Academy of Sciences, made the Villa the Academy's current headquarters in 1936.