Pirro Ligorio, who was responsible for the iconographic programs worked out in the villa's frescos, was also commissioned to lay out the gardens for the villa, with the assistance of Tommaso Chiruchi of Bologna, one of the most skilled hydraulic engineers of the sixteenth century; Chiruchi had worked on the fountains at Villa Lante. At Villa d'Este he was assisted in the technical designs for the fountains by a Frenchman, Claude Venard, who was a manufacturer of hydraulic organs.
The ceiling frescos of the villa
Cardinal Alessandro d'Este (it) repaired and extended the gardens from 1605. In the eighteenth century the villa and its gardens passed to the House of Habsburg after Ercole III d'Este bequeathed it to his daughter Maria Beatrice, married to Grand Duke Ferdinand of Habsburg. The villa and its gardens were neglected. The hydraulics fell into disuse, and many of the sculptures commissioned by Ippolito d'Este were scattered to other sites. The picturesque sense of decay recorded by Carl Blechen and other painters was reversed during the tenure of Cardinal Gustav Adolf Hohenlohe; the Cardinal hosted Franz Liszt, who evoked the garden in his Les Jeux d'Eaux à la Villa d'Este and gave one of his last concerts here. Villa d'Este was purchased for the Italian State after World War I, restored, and refurnished with paintings from the storerooms of the Galleria Nazionale, Rome. Jean Garrigue's volume of poems A Water Walk by Villa d'Este (1959) continues a long tradition of poetry inspired by the gardens. Kenneth Anger filmed Eaux d'artifice among the water features of the garden. Thus the Villa has been celebrated in poetry, painting and music.
The grounds of the Villa d'Este also house the Museo Didattico del Libro Antico, a teaching museum for the study and conservation of antiquarian books.
Pirro Ligorio's Gran Loggia on the garden front
The villa[edit]