THE VILLA:

The Tuscan landscape has barely changed over the past 500 years; the countryside punctuated by small farms and villages of sun-faded terracotta brick and plaster, and between them the villas of the old Sienese aristocracy, the former homes of popes and cardinals, the seats of long-ago power. One of the most beautiful of them all is Villa Cetinale, built in 1680 by Cardinal Flavio Chigi for his august relation Pope Alexander VII.

This Roman baroque mansion lies hidden, like an

enchanted castle, up a long dusty road lined with paintbrush-tipped cypress trees. Far above it, reached by the 300 steps of the Santa Scala, stands the Romitorio, a tiny monastery built to process the sins and absolutions of the cardinals who once lived here.

Benedetto Giovannelli, a local architect, designed these first works completed between 1651 and 1656. After Fabio Chigi became Pope Alexander VII in 1655, the works came to a halt until 1676, when his nephew Flavio inherited Cetinale.

Flavio wanted to transform the villa in Roman Baroque

fashion and hired the architect Carlo Fontana, pupil of Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Fontana designed the monumental stair and the marble portal surmounted by a great Chigi coat-of-arms on the northern façade. He projected the chapel, next to which is the "limonaia" (lemon house). In front of the house stand "Spring" and "Summer", two statues by Giuseppe Mazzuoli. Behind the north front, stand two pillars containing two massive statues, 15th-century copies of Trajan's column in Rome. The avenue then narrows and runs for 220 meters, until it reaches two stone busts of Napoleon and one of his marshals, commemorating the French emperor's visit to Cetinale in 1811. The theatre lies behind the statues and can be reached from the North, from the ancient road to Siena.

A small gate leads to the start of "Scala Santa" (Holy Stair), about 300 steps, ending in a stone platform. Here stands the "Romitorio" a five-story hermitage inhabited by monks until the end of 19th century, now fully restored. The straight line that runs from the Romitorio down the avenue and past the house finishes on the southeastern side of the villa, with an enormous statue of Hercules, also by Mazzuoli. To the North lies the Thebaid (Holy Wood), named after the desert around the Egyptian city of Thebes, where the early Christians retreated, in order to escape from persecution. Paths, avenues, statues of saints and hermits, and one of the seven votive Chapels surrounding Cetinale are to be found in the Tebaid. The chapels are decorated with frescos representing "The Seven Sorrows of the Virgin" Most frescos have deteriorated but a few are still visible such as "Escape to Egypt" on the outside wall towards Siena.

PALIO DI SIENA:

The Palio of Siena, the most famous horserace in Italy was raced seven times between 1679 and 1692 at the villa in the Tebaid, on account of riots in the city. There is no record of Palios at Cetinale after Flavio's death.