Fendi Joins Restoration of the Tivoli Gardens' Grotto of Diana

Fendi has announced that it will start working towards a conservative restoration of the Grotto of Diana at the Estense Garden in Tivoli, in collaboration with Villa Adriana and Villa d'Este. The historic center is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which includes a lush garden, several sculptural fountains, and other charming water features. 

"This initiative renews our commitment in protecting and enhancing Italian cultural heritage, which in the past has led us to the restoration of symbolic places in Rome to preserve beauty for future generations," said Serge Brunschwig, Chairman and CEO of Fendi. 

The house's choice to engage in this restoration project in Tivoli, only a short distance from Rome—Fendi's global headquarters—exhibits the label's continued passion for preserving and celebrating Italian cultural heritage. In the past, Fendi has exhibited this same commitment to restoration, as seen in the generous donation of 2.5 million Euros toward the reconstruction of the famed Temple of Venus and Rome, a monument of the Roman Empire located on the Palatine Hill, and various emblematic fountains throughout the city of Rome, notably including the Trevi Fountain. 

This conservation project aims to protect and enhance the natural beauty of the cultural heritage site through the restoration of the fountain, nymphaeum, and walkways of the garden and grotto. Also included in the plans for the project is a revision of the site's motor accessibility, an element of the grotto that will be reanalyzed to better meet the needs of people with visual, hearing, and cognitive disabilities through a dedicated path.

Built between 1570 and 1572 by Paolo Calandrino, the grotto is dedicated to Diana, the Roman goddess of the hunt, and was designed with her virtues of "honest pleasure and chastity" in mind, resulting in a verdant, exquisite structure, and has long served as an inspiration for other grottos and nymphaea in European gardens. The entire grotto is covered with stucco, shells, majolica tiles, glass, and stone, creating a beautiful, mosaic-like image. 

"The overall conservative intervention aims at ensuring the protection of this heritage by working on the decorated surfaces as well as on the adjacent structures and paths, to fully recover the legibility of the decorative cycle. The objective is to reopen to the public one central junction of the visitor route and an architectural and decorative space that is essential to the understanding of Villa d'Este itself," said Andrea Bruciati, director of the Villa Adriana and Villa d’Este Autonomous Institute, in reference to the future plans for the site.