The Getty Villa is modeled after a first-century Roman country house, the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum, Italy from the first century. The building was constructed in the early 1970s by architects who worked closely with J. Paul Getty to develop the interior and exterior details. Buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in A.D. 79, much of the Villa dei Papiri remains unexcavated. Therefore, architects based many of the Museum's architectural and landscaping details on elements from other ancient Roman houses in the towns of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiae. Gardens are integral to the setting of the Getty Villa, as they were in the ancient Roman home, and include herbs and shrubs inspired by those grown in ancient Roman homes for food and ceremony. It opened in 1974, but was never visited by Getty, who died in 1976. Following his death, the museum inherited $661 million and began planning a much larger campus, the Getty Center, in nearby Brentwood which opened in 1997. The museum overcame neighborhood opposition to its new campus plan by agreeing to limit the total size of the development on the Getty Center site. To meet the museum's total space needs, the museum decided to split between the two locations with the Getty Villa housing the Greek, Roman, and Etruscan antiquities. The Villa was closed in 1997 for renovations and has only reopened in 2006.
Because of limited parking, you need to make a reservation to visit the Getty Villa. The museum is free but there is a $15 charge for parking. The Villa is located in a small canyon just off the coastal highway in Pacific Palisades. As a result, the way the buildings are built, you can see the ocean from the Villa. Once you park, you walk up a short wooded path to the museum. On the hill above the museum are Getty's original private ranch house and the museum wing that Getty added to his home in 1954. They are now used for curatorial offices, meeting rooms and as a library. Although not open to the public, the campus includes J. Paul Getty's grave on the hill behind his ranch house. To the west of the Museum is a 450-seat outdoor Greek theater where evening performances are staged, named in honor of Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman. The theater faces the west side of the Villa and uses its entrance as a stage. To the northwest of the theater is a three-story, 15,500-square-foot (1,440 m2) building built into the hill that contains the museum store on the lower level, a cafe on the second level, and a private dining room on the top level.
There are gardens and little places of tranquility throughout the grounds. A large peristylium extends south toward the ocean from the museum proper. In rural settings a wealthy Roman could surround a villa with terraced gardens; within a city, like Herculaneum, Romans created their gardens inside the domus. The peristylium was an open courtyard within the house; the columns or square pillars surrounding the garden supported a shady roofed portico whose inner walls were often embellished with elaborate wall paintings of landscapes and trompe-l'oeil architecture. This created a colonnaded walkway around the perimeter of the courtyard, which influenced monastic structures centuries later. On the sides of the outer peristylium of the Getty Villa are painted panels which isolate the courtyard and make you feel like you are really in an Italian villa. Many, if not all, of the statues are copies of originals from the Villa dei Papiri in Herculaneum, Italy.
The floors are covered with marble and marble mosaics and there are fountains and large pools of water, all of which aid in cooling the space. The end of the Roman domus is one mark of the extinction of the Late Classical culture: “the disappearance of the Roman peristyle house marks the end of the ancient world and its way of life,” remarked Simon P. Ellis. “No new peristyle houses were built after A.D. 550.” Ellis identified the latest known peristyle house built from scratch as the “House of the Falconer” at Argos, dating from the style of its floor mosaics about 530-550 CE.
The peristyle did not completely die out, we see the same style in cloisters, farmhouses, European cities and Spanish/South American/Mexican houses. Increasingly, the public plaza replaced the private peristyle, with the same features including covered walkways, fountains, statues and pools of water. Large houses and villas were increasingly abandoned in the fifth century, although a few palatial structures were expanded and enriched, as power and classical culture became concentrated in a narrowing class, and public life withdrew to the basilica, or audience chamber, of the King. A court or courtyard is an enclosed area, often a space enclosed by a building that is open to the sky. These areas in inns and public buildings were often the primary meeting places for some purposes, leading to the other meanings of court. Both of the words “court” and “yard” derive from the same root, meaning an enclosed space. Courtyard homes are more prevalent in temperate climates, as an open central court can be an important aid to cooling house in warm weather. However, courtyard houses have been found in harsher climates as well for centuries. In time the courtyards became gardens, havens of public space within a city.
So the fascination of Greek and Roman antiquities by John Paul Getty led to this beautiful and relatively accurate re-creation of a first century Roman villa which sadly, he never saw completed. Unfortunately in the United States, only the oldest cities maintained the tradition of public plazas, such as Rockefeller Square in New York and Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco, due to the influence of the automobile. Thankfully, public walking spaces, plazas and biking are making a comeback. Today almost every city in America is touting its gentrification projects. So this is a call to visit the Getty Villa, a project that began in the dreams of John Paul Getty and ended in the reality of a true Italian Villa in Pacific Palisades. Experience the elegance of Roman life two thousand years ago, without electricity, automobiles or air conditioning; you might find yourself wishing for ancient life rather than the many conveniences we enjoy today, if you were filthy rich.
References:
Getty Villa: http://www.getty.edu/visit/
Gardens and Plants of the Getty Villa: http://www.amazon.com/Gardens-Plants-Getty-Villa-Patrick/dp/160606049X
Wikipedia Peristyium: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peristyle
Simon P. Ellis, “The End of the Roman House” American Journal of Archaeology 92.4 (October 1988:565-576) opened the article's abstract with these words.
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