PARADISE REVEALED

For six generations, Italy's powerful Agnelli clan has retreated to Villar Perosa, a 25-acre walled estate in the foothills of the Alps, with vast hidden gardens that are legendary for their beauty. In November, MARELLA AGNELLI, who began refining and extending this gorgeous landscape in 1955, unveils her creation with a book of her photographs, reports MADISON COX, while her niece Marella Garacciolo finds a family's history mirrored in its garden paradise

The atmosphere is one of controlled serenity and harmonized perfection, which keep the outside world at bay.

Villar Perosa, like the fabled Xanadu, ranks high among those private gardens which, for the most part, are known only by name except to the happy few. This very secret, secluded, 25-acre landscape, which has been the intimate country retreat for six generations of Italy's powerful Agnelli family, is unveiled completely for the first time by its owner Marella Agnelli, with a text by her niece and namesake,

Marella Caracciolo, and commentary by the landscape architect Paolo Peirone, in The Agnelli Gardens at Villar Perosa, which will be published in November by Harry N. Abrams.

A garden can reflect the spirit, personality, and passion of its makers, as well as the age in which they live. Villar Perosa is one of the rare examples of a private garden that has evolved over the course of nearly 200 years, where family histories, political events, and popular garden trends are layered and woven together to produce not a single vision but a compilation of many.

Reminiscent of King Ludwig II of Bavaria's fanciful palace at Linderhof, the cream-colored, confectionery-like, 18th-century Villar Perosa is perched among the rugged foothills of the Italian Alps, 30 miles from Turin, in the Chisone Valley. Within the walled estate, the unifying atmosphere is one of controlled serenity and harmonized perfection, which keep the outside world at bay.

Since the early 1800s, succeeding generations of Agnellis have transformed the hillside retreat into a paradise of vast, emerald-green lawns dotted with exotic trees; terraces of formal, boxwood-edged parterres; and shaded walks that meander through woods and glades. In 1955, two years after her marriage to Fiat heir Gianni Agnelli, Donna Marella, as she is known in Italy, decided to refine the existing gardens and extend them into the valley below. She commissioned the English garden designer Russell Page, and together the two of them produced one of the mid-20th century's most distinctive and influential landscapes.

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Working closely with Marella Agnelli for more than five years, Page simplified parterres, revised planting compositions, and opened vistas outward to the neighboring countryside. His most magnificent creation was the famed lake gardens—11 connecting artificial ponds and small lakes—in the property's lower valley, linked to the older gardens by a Chinese-Chippendale-style bridge he designed.

More recent additions to the park at Villar Perosa include a swimming pool and wooden pavilion, designed in the mid-80s by the Italian architect Gae Aulenti, and the adjacent sculpture gardens Marella Agnelli devised with Paolo Peirone. There, amid perfectly clipped spheres of boxwood and clouds of Iceberg roses and sage, stand massive works by Henry Moore, Max Ernst, and Rene Magritte.

To accompany Marella Agnelli's photographs, Marella Caracciolo has told the Agnelli family history as it is mirrored in their cherished landscape. A contributing editor to House & Garden, Caracciolo is the author of three other books, including a history of the exotic gardens of Ninfa, another key example of Italian landscaping, 44 miles southeast of Rome. Her ability to record various family members' recollections of life at Perosa provides an intimate view into this rarefied world, as well as a look at the ideas that produced this garden paradise.

One of the most poignant passages in the book recounts the arrival in 1955 of the great Russell Page, who was then 49 years old. Much has been written about the influential designer, yet never has there been a clearer portrait of the elusive man, along with his spheres of inspiration, his manner of working, his solitary living, and his mystical Eastern beliefs. Caracciolo has drawn from Page's own notes on the making of the Villar Perosa gardens.

Everywhere in the book is the presence of Marella Agnelli. Almost as legendary today as Kubla Khan, who built Xanadu, she realized early on how important a place of refuge can be to the unity of a family. The Agnelli Gardens at Villar Perosa is a testimony to her creation of this complex, layered space, her respect for the work of past generations, and her determination to forge links to the future.