This course is designed as an introductory survey of the history of landscape architecture and the wider, cultivated landscape in Western Europe from the Ancient Roman period to seventeenth-century Rome. The focus is primarily on Italian landscape history, in particular the townhouse gardens and villas of Pompeii and Herculaneum, the imperial residences of Ancient Rome, specifically Nero’s Golden House and Hadrian’s villa, the medieval cloister garden and Islamic parallels, the Medici villas of Florence, sixteenth-century gardens in central Italy, Palladian villas, and the villa parks of Baroque Rome. The course examines chronologically the evolution of several key elements of landscape architectural design: garden typologies, architectural typologies relating to the garden, the various uses of water in the garden and in public fountains, the organization and availability of plant materials, geographical and topographical issues, and the role of sculpture and of garden ornamentation. A central theme of the course is the blurring of boundaries between inside and outside, the extension of architecture into the landscape and the insertion of landscape into buildings. The emphasis is on looking at specific gardens or representations of landscape in paintings, plans, maps, prints, and other media in each of the four periods under discussion—Ancient Roman, Medieval, early to late Renaissance, and Italian Baroque—and to situate them within their cultural context. Where appropriate, parallels are drawn with landscape architecture in later periods in France, England, and America.