Flights of fancy
Redhot (Virgin Express) magazine
Published on Thursday June 1, 2006
In need of an escape? Chris Alden lists the seven most eccentric palaces, monuments and gardens of Europe – where every corner hides a work of art, and there’s always another tower to climb
Villa d’Este, Tivoli, near Rome
If you’re proud of the water feature in your garden, better not come to the Villa d’Este. With 51 interlocking fountains, 398 spouts, 364 jets, 64 waterfalls and about half a mile of water courses, the gardens of this Renaissance villa, built high above cliffs overlooking the city of Rome, are hard to compete with for watery excess.
Villa d’Este was built in 1550 for a Catholic cardinal, Ippolito d’Este – but its allusions are mostly pagan, with grottoes devoted to Diana and Hercules, fountains for the wine god Bacchus and ruins of a Roman villa in the grounds. Its highlight is an extraordinary Organ Fountain, powered by water pressure, which visitors can operate by standing on stone pads.
But Cardinal d’Este’s dream palace was in fact his prison. When his rival Julius III became Pope, he named Ippolito the governor of Tivoli – effectively banning him from the capital. The cardinal spent the last 22 years of his life creating his fantasy garden, enjoying perfect views of the city from which he was exiled.
www.villadestetivoli.info/storiae.htm
La Sagrada Família, Barcelona
The life’s work of the architect Antoni Gaudí, the temple of La Sagrada Família is the abiding symbol of the city of Barcelona. Gaudí’s goal was to create the “last great sanctuary of Christendom” – but he never completed it, despite working on the project from 1883 until his death in 1926, spending the last years of his life living in a shack on-site.
The completed building will include 12 bell-towers to represent each of the apostles; six domes to represent the evangelists, the Virgin and Christ; and three giant façades, only one of which was completed by Gaudí. But his Nativity façade is the strangest part of the building, its narrowing towers reaching to the sky like pipes from a huge organ or giant ears of corn. Visitors can climb the bell-towers for a dizzying view of the city – but get there early, or you’ll end up on a slow, claustrophobic schlep up with little hope of getting back down quickly if you change your mind.
No one knows what Gaudí’s plans for the temple were: his models were destroyed by anarchists in 1936, 10 years after he was run over by a tram and killed. But one thing is for sure: the finished version would have been no less eccentric than it already is.
www.sagradafamilia.org
Facteur Cheval’s Palais Idéal, Hauterives, France
If you’re looking for an unusual day trip within a couple of hours’ drive of Geneva, then don’t hesitate to cross the French border to the Palais Idéal – a strange fantasy palace built by local postman Ferdinand Cheval. When Cheval began single-handedly creating his dream from rocks in his village in 1879, locals thought he was a madman. Thirty-three years and 93,000 hours of work later, he was being hailed as a genius.
The resulting structure seems to be an insight into an archaeologist’s unconscious: a stone temple that seems to be at once growing, at once crumbling back to earth, combining a mosque, Khmer temple, an Egyptian tomb, a Hindu sanctuary, the birthplace of Christ and images from nature and classical antiquity. Cheval was 76 years old when he finished the building; he died aged 88, and was laid to rest in a tomb he had designed for himself.
www.facteurcheval.com
Neuschwanstein castle, near Munich
If Neuschwanstein castle seems to leap straight out of a Disney story, that’s not surprising: this archetypal fairy-tale palace, begun in 1869 by Ludwig II, king of Bavaria, was the primary inspiration for the Sleeping Beauty castle in Disneyland.
Ludwig’s goal was to build his castle “in the authentic style of the old German knights” – and he couldn’t have picked a better place: a hill by a vertiginous gorge, where the snow-capped Alps would form the perfect backdrop to its countless towers.
Ludwig never lived to see his dream castle – he died in 1886, at which the decision was taken to finish the job off as quickly as possible, with the original vision only one-third complete.
www.neuschwanstein.de
Schloss Pfaueninsel, Berlin
If you’re the king of Prussia in the 18th century, you can attract as many mistresses as you like – so why not build a fantasy castle for your favourite girlfriend, and drop in on her when the mood suits? That’s what Friedrich Wilhelm II did when he commissioned a castle for Wilhelmine, the beautiful daughter of an innkeeper, on the island of Pfaueninsel in 1794.
But Pfaueninsel is no ordinary castle: it is a deliberately faked ruin, with wooden towers rising on each side of a central arch, and a bridge connecting them at the highest point. The bizarre façade is designed to be viewed from across the river Havel at the Marble Palace at Potsdam, where Friedrich spent most of his time.
The castle wasn’t lucky for Wilhelmine – on Friedrich’s death in 1797, she was thrown into jail by his successor, Friedrich Wilhelm III, accused of fraud and her possessions were confiscated. But the island these days is one of the “green lungs” of Berlin – and well worth the ferry ride across the Havel for a Sunday stroll.
www.spsg.de
Quinta da Regaleira, Sintra, near Lisbon
If you’re afraid of the dark, stop reading now. But if your idea of fun is to disappear through a hidden entrance into a grotto, feel your way through a subterranean tunnel leading hundreds of metres into a hillside and emerge to discover a secret staircase, spiralling up toward the sunlight like the inside of a shell – then welcome. You’ve just stepped into strange world of the Quinta da Regaleira in Sintra, a fantasy palace of underground tunnels, secret grottoes, fairytale towers, classical allusions and impenetrable secrets.
The palace was built by António Carvalho Monteiro, a rich academic with a keen interest in initiation rites. It would take months to uncover the symbolism at work here – from the statues of Greek gods lined up in the garden, to the tunnel underneath the Christian chapel – but the whole experience seems more like a Freudian joke. Whether you’re climbing staircases, pushing your way through secret entrances or just enjoying the beauty of the Portuguese summer sunshine, this is as much fun as you can have outside your dreams.
www.visitportugal.com
Villa Kerylos, Beaulieu-sur-Mer, near Nice
Ever fancied living as an ancient Greek? Think you’d enjoy reclining on a couch in your shaded courtyard, wearing a toga, eating grapes and gazing through a window at the Mediterranean Sea? If so, I hate to tell you – but there’s a German who’s done it already.
Théodore Reinach, a rich archaeologist, chose Beaulieu-sur-Mer in the south of France as the site for Villa Kerylos, his authentic reconstruction of an ancient Greek villa. Along with his architect, Emmanuel Pontremoli, he based the design on a Greek nobleman’s house from the second-century BC – including marble columns, classically inspired frescoes and original mosaics and a master bedroom dedicated to Eros, the god of love. Look out for the bizarre mosaic in which Theseus stabs the Cretan Minotaur in the head.
www.villa-kerylos.com
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