Location

The selected location for the Visual Sound Festival 2025 is the amazing Villa d’Este, declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2001, the villa grounds include a masterpiece of Italian garden design with an amazing concentration of fountains, nymphaea, grottoes, water themes and a organ which produces audible effects created by water.

This is the place where, disillusioned at not having been elected as Pope, Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este revived the splendour of the courts of Ferrara, Rome and Fointanebleau, and brought the magnificence of Villa Adriana back to life. Governor of Tivoli from the year 1550, he soon toyed with the idea of creating a garden on the slope of the Valle gaudente, but it was only after 1560 that the architectural and iconological aspects of the Villa, designed by painter-archaeologist-architect Pirro Ligorio and built by court architect Alberto Galvani, became clear. The palace was decorated by the protagonists of late Roman Mannerism.

The Villa had almost been completed by the time Ippolito d’Este died in 1572. Further work in the 17th century was followed by a period of decline, until Cardinal Gustav Adolf von Hohenlohe refurbished the old grandeur and even hosted musician Ferenc Liszt (1811-1886). Purchased by the Italian government between the Twenties and Thirties of the last century, the Villa was renovated and opened to the public.