Among the flow of news of terrible destruction suffered by Los Angeles’ neighborhoods in ongoing wildfires, I found a bit about the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, which avoided significant damage due to its state-of-the-art fire prevention systems. It prompted me to review my pictures of it from our trip to South California in the summer of 2021. I realized that although I had put up my usual “Back from…” announcement upon returning home from that journey, I somehow never followed that up with any photosets. So here is a short retrospective.
Getty Villa was opened in 1974 as a reimagined version of Villa dei Papiri, a Roman patrician retreat on the Bay of Naples, buried in the Mount Vesuvius eruption in 79 CE along with Pompeii, Herculaneum and everything around. Although it is clearly a modern building impersonating an ancient one, I find it utterly captivating to be able to step inside a Roman villa, as opposed to straining my imagination to envision how two-thousand-year-old ruins may have appeared in their heyday, which is basically what you have to do when visiting archaeological sites. In that, Getty Villa is a rather unique attraction.
Of the main spaces in the complex, you first come to the Autrium, which, being the house’s main public room, is probably the most understated.
Next, you proceed to the Inner Peristyle.
There are several smaller rooms surrounding the lovely courtyard, of which the Temple of Hercules is the most impressive, with the floor mosaic incorporating North African, Turkish, and Greek marble of different colors.
Elsewhere, the wall and ceiling decorations are full of color as well.
The villa’s largest space is the Outer Peristyle’s formal garden.
The most delightful and serene exterior space might be the much smaller East Garden, which is actually a replica not from Villa dei Papiri but instead from the House of the Large Fountain in Pompeii.
And on the upper floor of the main building is located an excellent museum collection, exhibiting everything from ancient mosaics to pottery to paintings to statues to stonework.
For my money, entirely fascinating!