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Villa Doria Pamphilj is the largest park in the city of Rome, housing interesting Roman and medieval archaeological sites, such as the Traiano-Paolo aqueduct that used to feed several fountains.

It was born as a country estate for the noble Pamphilj Roman family, who built the “Casino del Bel Respiro” with the adjoining gardens – as a museum for a rich collection of ancient and modern statues.
The Pamphilj family also restored the original “Villa Vecchia”, and built fountains and portals in the park, emphasizing the importance of their lineage.

In the nineteenth century, they expanded the property, acquiring the land and ruins of nearby Villa Corsini, and building a portal over the remains of the ancient structure: the monumental “Arco dei Quattro Venti”.
At the entrance of the park two magnificent Atlas cedars (Cedrus atlantica) were planted, and the “Garden of the Theatre” – a large stone exedra for outdoor theatrical and musical performances – was remodelled with English landscape features.

Today, part of the park is used for the Representation of the Prime Minister’s office, while the remaining portion is owned by the Municipality of Rome.

Inside the park, there’s the “Valle dei Daini” (Fallow Deers Valley): an area of 650.000 square feet, which used to be a garden cultivated with vineyards and later enriched with several tree species. Later on, it was turned into a private hunting reserve. There are also the nineteenth-century greenhouses and the palm garden along with traces of an ancient cedar garden. The latter was once used for therapeutic and cosmetic properties of citrus fruits.

Here it’s possible to admire fruit plants such as kernels, walnuts, pears and pomegranates, an holm oak forest with a large number of Quercus ilex, a historic pine forest with more than 500 specimens of Pinus pinea, and a monumental specimen of Taxodium discticum on the islet of Belvedere Lake.

This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)