Villa Lante at Bagnaia, near Viterbo, is a Mannerist garden of surprise. It is attributed to Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola, and Pirro Ligorio was also consulted. Cardinal Gianfrancesco Gambara began the first casino in the late 1560s on a former walled hunting ground. After Gambara died in 1587, Cardinal Alessandro Peretti di Montalto, then 17, finished the project and built the second casino.
The two nearly identical square casini each have a rusticated ground floor, a piano nobile and a crowning lantern. The Quadrato is a perfectly square parterre with a central fountain and Giambologna's Fontana dei Mori. A long stone table has a water channel for cooling wine, and a chain of water, the catena d'acqua, feeds a fountain flanked by river gods.
Allied bombing in 1944 heavily damaged the gardens and casini. The Republic of Italy has owned the villa since December 2014.
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