This characteristic town just outside Viterbo is famous because of Villa Lante. The historic centre, marked by a cylindrical tower defending the ancient medieval cas­tle that was later transformed into a baron's palace with an elegant loggia, is ac­cessed through a single gate gallery. The in­side is criss-crossed with meandering alleys and squares, brightened by a Vignola-type fountain, that overlook the Pierina valley to create a truly charming atmosphere. The city-planning revolution of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, fostered by bish­ops and cardinals who regularly used the town as their summer residence, ended with expansion of the residential area and the construction of Villa Lante in an area used as a hunting reserve (barco). The villa was built in the mid-sixteenth century (it may have been designed by Vignola) through the initiative of Cardinal Giovan Francesco De Gambara, formerly bishop of Viterbo. The work to complete and extend the villa was done by Cardinal Peretti-­Montalto during the following decades.

It represents one of the most marvellous examples of Italian-style Renaissance gar­dens. The steep slope, divided into five ter­races with elegant fountains united by geo­metric staircases and other decorative mo­tifs, ends in a parterre from which visitors can admire the view of the buildings -­ Palazzine - that form the backdrop of a symbolic stage.

To get an overall view, climb to the last level whose background, the Diluvio foun­tain (carved from rock covered with dense vegetation and surrounded by the two log­gias of the Muses) is a basin for the waters rising from a spring in the Cimini hills and represents the compositional theme of the garden. Following the slope, the stream creates waterfalls, fills fountains and basins, and ends at the so-called Quadrato. The Delfini fountain is the starting point for a unique shrimp-shaped chain down to the Giganti fountain below (simbolising the Tiber and Arno rivers) that precedes an original pool known as the Cardinal's Table. The balustrade of the Lumini fountain affords a lovely view oft he Italian-style garden with the Quadrato fountain in the middle, dominated by the group of the Four Moors.

The interior of the two "Palazzine" features an interesting series of frescoes. In the building on the right (built by Cardinal de Gambara in 1566), the Mannerist paintings of the Zuccari brothers and Antonio Tempesti school cover the walls and ceilings with mythological and religious stories, hunting and country scenes, between caryatids and grotesqueries. The decorations of the loggia (in which, as in the other rooms the strong personality of Raffaellino da Reggio can be noted) depict mythological scenes and landscapes dotted with ruins on the four-web vault. The walls, which afe di­vided by large borders with monochromatic caryatids with the cardinal's coat of arms, portray (starting from the left) Villa d'Este in Tivoli, the Farnese villas in Caprarola and Capodimonte, and the original layout of Villa Lante in Bagnaia. On the first floor, there is also a notable seventeenth-century cartoon, graced with putti, by Giovan Fran­cesco Romanelli, commissioned for the ta­pestries of Palazzo Barberini in Rome. Palazzina Montalto, on the left, was com­pleted in around 1590 and was decorated at the turn of the seventeenth century by Agostino Tassi, Cavalier d'Arpino and Ora­zio Gentileschi. Depicted in the loggia on the garden level are seascapes and allegor­ical figures. On the first floor, the Main Hall with its finely-decorated ceiling is lovely.

Among the numerous fountains located in the park area (outside the gates of the villa), one of the most outstanding ones is the monumental fountain of Pegasus.