View of the garden side

Immediately outside the gates of Rome, between the banks of Tiber and Monte Gianicolo, the merchant and banker Agostino Chigi had a villa built between 1505 and 1511, the present Villa Farnesina. Chigi was from Siena and had become fabulously wealthy in Rome under the Popes Alexander VI and Julius II. His business network stretched across Europe. In this new villa, designed by Baldassare Peruzzi, he held celebrated parties with popes, cardinals, and friends; there he enjoyed a refined lifestyle, surrounded by humanists and poets. Countless antiquities were placed in the garden; the loggias and halls were lavishly decorated with paintings.

View the ground plan of Villa Farnesina, Rome.