Just a short train ride from London is Osterley Park, an Elizabethan house turned neo-Classical masterpiece. It has some of the most complete (and truly magnificent!) Robert Adam interiors I have ever seen. Because the house was used so infrequently over the years ~ and then primarily as a place to entertain ~ it has retained much of its Adam interior decoration. The 18th-century pleasure grounds are still accessible, and dotted with delightful follies. See more here.
(photos: a detail of the portico ceiling, and an unruly dill weed in the Elizabethan garden)
(photos: a detail of the portico ceiling, and an unruly dill weed in the Elizabethan garden)
1 comment:
When future president John Adams visited Osterley Park he wrote that "temples to Bacchus and Venus are quite unnessessary as mankind have no need of artificial incitements." KDM
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