Journeys›Photograph

February Day at the Getty Villa

·Los Angeles, California·#winter#architecture#museum#gardens#classical-art
Two people stand on a patio between fluted white columns, with a fountain and dark statues in the foreground.

The Getty Villa sits right off Pacific Coast Highway in Pacific Palisades, built as a full-scale Roman country house, and we gave it most of a February afternoon. Started in the inner courtyard among the bronze figures and the narrow fountain, then out through the pergola walk — grape vines still bare on the overhead beams, daffodils already up along the hedges below.

The outer peristyle is the main event: a reflecting pool that must run a couple hundred feet, bronzes on rough stone bases in the water, colonnades down both sides. From the far end you can look back at the whole house with the hills stacked up behind it.

Inside, the galleries are all Greek and Roman antiquities. One volute krater had a band of horsemen circling the rim, the body below almost entirely black, cracks from its reassembly still visible if you got close.

Two people stand in a courtyard between two dark statues, in front of a building with white columns.A formal garden with a long rectangular pool, fountains, a statue, a person, architectural elements, and blue sky.A bronze statue of a reclining figure in a fountain, with two people and a classical-style building in a garden.A garden path under a bare-vined pergola, flanked by hedges and palm trees, with a distant person and a pool.A bronze statue sits in a long blue pool, leading to a classical building, palm trees, and gardens under a clear sky.A bronze statue in a long reflecting pool faces a classical building, flanked by palm trees and tree-covered hills.A bronze statue in a long blue pool in front of a white building with palm trees and hills under a clear sky.An ancient Greek red-figure krater with figurative bands and volute handles is on display.

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