Page:Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, volume 4.djvu/200

192 made by the Romans for the purpose of bringing water from Yaldimarina to Florence, where the vaulted reservoir of the same is to be found. Thus situate, the palace has an exceedingly agreeable and even beautiful view, the waters before it are divided by a bridge twelve braccia wide, which conducts to an avenue of the same width, formed by mulberry trees, covering it closely on both sides and rising to a height of ten braccia, insomuch that they form a vault over head, beneath which one may walk for three hundred braccia in the most agreeable shade. This avenue of mulberries opens on the high road to Prato, by a gate placed between two fountains, which give water to the travellers who pass that way as well as to their animals and the cattle of the neighbourhood.

On the eastern side of the palace is a handsome pile of buildings which serve as stables, and towards the west is a private garden, which is gained by crossing the court of the stables and passing directly through the ground floor of the palace by the loggie, halls, and apartments level with the garden, from which, by a door on its western side, a second and very large garden full of fruit-trees is attained. At the end of the last-mentioned garden is a wood of pines, which conceals the dwellings of the labourers and others engaged in the service of the palace. The northern front of the fabric, that which looks towards the hill, has a lawn before it, the length of which is equal to that of the palace, the stables, and the private garden united, and from this lawn there is an ascent by steps to the principal garden, which is surrounded by walls of the ordinary kind, and the garden itself rising by a gentle acclivity, extends to such a distance from the palace as to be entirely open to the influence of the southern sun, precisely as if no building stood before it. At its upper end, moreover, the garden attains to such a height that not only is the whole of the palace to be discovered therefrom, but the entire plain extending before and around it, together with the city itself.

In the midst of the last-mentioned garden there is a wood of high cypresses with laurels and shrubs of various kinds, which form a circle wherein is a labyrinth surrounded by hedges of box two braccia and a half high, the growth being so equal, and the whole arranged in so beautiful a manner.