THE AVIARY

Giovanni Andrea Doria had built an aviary in 1593 at his villa at Pegli, and then commissioned a very large one for the south garden of Palazzo del Principe (1603). Backing onto the walls to the west, this structure caused amazement amongst guests and visitors, to the point of becoming the main attraction of the garden, according to the picture given by travellers, amongst whom was the English writer, John Evelyn.

The aviary is today destroyed, but data emerging from archaeological excavations undertaken in the western sector of the garden and the documents of the time allow us partially to reconstruct its characteristics. It was formed of great poles in iron, which held up a metal “sheet”, and at the centre a high cupola, probably made out of bronze wires, surmounted by the heraldic symbol of the Doria, the eagle.

There was a wood of cypresses and other high trees enclosed on the inside - whose trunks, according to a contemporary account, measured more than two feet in diameter - on which rested and nested pheasants and innumerable other birds. The metal structure was planned by Battista Orsolino, who was asked to produce a wooden model, while the actual construction was carried out by Andrea Varchi, the metal-worker, and by Silbestro Mongiardino.

Orsolino also sculpted the three fountains of the aviary, whose basins measured about two and a half metres across, and which contributed to the beauty of the whole and at the same time supplied the birds with water. The Calvi brothers decorated the structure with painted panels.