Museum Time: The Getty Villa

Inner Peristyle

Hunter went on his first trip to a museum! He found the architecture fascinating, not the doric columns of the outer peristyle, but the modern family restroom where he spent a good deal of time nursing ;)

Anyway, I love the Getty museums. Last year when Isaiah's mom came to town we visited the Getty Center, so for her visit this year we made our way up to the villa. I could go back time and time again, and I honestly should because I haven't seen all there is to see!

After having spent lots of oil money on fabulous works of Greek, Roman, and Etruscan art, Mr. Getty decided to build a museum to house his collection. And not just any museum, a villa! In fact, the villa is loosely modeled after the Villa dei Papiri, located just outside of Herculaneum (did you remember that we went here on our tour of Italy?), which was buried during the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. Many of the wall paintings and other details reflect the styles found throughout the excavation sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

This was our second visit to the villa, though I never got around to posting about our first visit. If you like free tours like we do, you may find yourself spending most of your time touring the grounds (an attraction all on their own) and participating in the art docent talks, which leaves little time for wandering through the galleries admiring Mr. Getty's amazing antiquities collection. This visit was very much like our first because we brought some first-time visitors with us, so once again we planned our visit around the tours.

If you plan to make a visit, I highly recommend arriving when the museum opens at 10 am so you can participate in both the Architecture Tour and Garden Tour (40 minutes each, but some of the information on these tours overlap, so if you can't squeeze in both, at least take one of these tours) as well as the Spotlight Talk (an art historian gives a 30-minute talk on one piece in the collection, always a treat because they tend to be very passionate about the piece) and the Collection Highlights Tour. Treat yourself to lunch in the cafe, which has a great menu, and if there's time left, go back and check out all the ancient art and artifacts!

The Basilica

The Triclinium (Dining Room)

The Outer Peristyle

The Herb Garden

The Daddy and The Baby