Nothing makes me happier than learning something completely new and I had that experience again recently on my visit to the gardens at Villa La Quiete. Our lovely guide, seen below with the long hair, explained as we entered a small circular space surrounded by a circular planting of trees that had been pruned to form an open canopy around us. The center of the canopy was wide open to the sky and I regret not trying to take better pictures. At the time I was confused because ragnaia means spiderweb in Italian and I was struggling to understand its meaning here. At first I thought she was speaking about food for the silkworms that create the webs that can be spun into silk, because that was certainly an industry in Italy. It was only after I got home and did some research that I came to understand the purpose of a ragnaia in a garden.

Here’s what I learned: The ragnaia is a typical element of historic Italian gardens. The introduction of ragnaia coincides with the beginning of the golden age of the Italian garden, from the 16th century.

Above is an image of the actual ragnaia in the gardens at Villa La Quiete, although not mine. I found it on Google.

A ragnaia is a grove with tall trees, planted quite densely, between which nets were spread for the capture of small birds (aucupio), called ragne, as they resembled spider webs, hence the name. Unlike the uccellare which was generally made up of a clearing in a wooded area, the ragnaia usually had a linear layout, and very often followed a small stream that helped attract birds. Over time, in garden architecture, the ragnaia began to simply mean a grove, where one could perhaps find coolness in the summer months.

Another picture of the ragnaia at Villa La Quiete. The highlight and focus of this ragnaia is an enclosed “room” where seating is provided in these ornate stools seen above. One can sit here and enjoy the serene space, with its shade and subsequent coolness, and the sound of the moving air in the trees as well as birdsong and activity.

Our guide told us that the birds captures in the ragnaia provided most of the protein in the diet of the girls who attended school on this site.

The geometric structure of the formal garden coexists with the ragnaia. The ragnaia is a botanical architecture, made up of actual walls of plants, which runs longitudinally along the entire development of the formal garden and which was used for fowling, or hunting small birds. This sort of grove is made up of evergreen species, in particular holm oaks for the upper part and typical Mediterranean plants for the lower part such as phillyrea, buckthorn and boxwood. The perfectly linear structure of the ragnaia was constantly maintained to create walls of plants that were structured into avenues and rooms with completely green walls.

In the avenues of the so-called spiderwebs, nets would be laid out lengthwise, anciently called “spiders” because of their resemblance to cobwebs, which were used to capture birds attracted by the coolness and shade of this space, as well as by the possibility of food offered by the berries of the shrubs. Unable to land on the branches of the trees due to the perfectly linear pruning of the espaliers of the holm oak avenues, the birds were forced to descend to ground level, where the nets were laid out, and ended up being captured, as if getting caught in the spiderwebs. In the ragnaia, hunting was not the only activity: the “octagonal room” and the “royal room” are green rooms that still exist today made of walls of boxwood and centuries-old holm oaks, with stone stools and benches, where the Electress Anna Maria Luisa loved to stop to escape the heat, and enjoy the shade and the singing of the birds.

Typical of Italian gardens of the time, ragnaia were often scaled down or radically modified over the centuries to follow new garden trends that favored freer and less formal structures. This did not happen at La Quiete because the property, the Montalve conservatory, never changed until the end of the 20th century and thus there were no significant alterations to the original layout of the garden, which is a gift to us today.