The Eternal İtalian Garden

ONE'S idea of the Italian garden may have been formed by studies of the Villa Lante or Villa d'Este, but it is the terraces, courtyards and backyards of the small towns and villages that often provide the core qualities of spatial elegance, sensuality, light and shade that we have come to recognize as essentially Italian. Nowhere is this more evident than in southern Italy, a place that lacks (for historical, social and climatic reasons) the rich villas and gardens of the country farther north, and while many people rightly consider that the coastline from Salerno to Sorrento offers some of the most spectacular scenery in the world, there are modest beauties to be found here beyond the dizzying series of cliff-hanging villages nestling in the shadow of Vesuvius beyond the Bay of Naples. The small hotel gardens one may visit, and the many private gardens visible behind the larger villas in Ravello, Amalfi, Positano, and on the island of Capri, while perhaps not worthy of major features in the guidebooks, contribute to an unexpected extent to the glories of this part of Italy.

Two serious contenders for immortality are both in Ravello - the gardens of the Villas Rufolo and Cimbrone. My recommendation would be to visit Cimbrone first, for Cimbrone gives the larger picture, so to speak, of Italian garden design, offering an eclectic menu of styles, while Rufolo provides the intense experience of a vintage port at the end of a great meal. The garden at Cimbrone cascades down the hillside toward the Mediterranean (where most gardens are sited, for obvious reasons). The villa itself is an austere Renaissance building, with the addition of Moorish-influenced cloisters tiled in bright colors. The gardens spin off this ornamental architecture in a wonderful series of terraces and vistas, tempiettos, grottoes and statuary. Umbrella pines, high ilex hedges and huge pots punctuate the stone walls and grassy paths. But the most spectacular part of the Villa Cimbrone is the Belvedere Mercurio, a long terrace with marble busts at intervals along the balustrade, beyond which stretches a panorama of the Gulf of Salerno from Amalfi to Paestum from a parapet so steep that it invites vertigo.

From Cimbrone it is a short walk to the Villa Rufolo. This garden is on a much more modest scale and is interesting to compare it with its more grandiose neighbor. I share the response of Richard Wagner, who, while working on ''Parsifal,'' visited Rufolo in 1880 and was so overwhelmed by its intense beauty that he wrote in the visitors' book, ''Klingsor's magic garden is found!''

You start your preparation for the garden by walking down a long, shaded path by a high wall that is part of Ravello Cathedral, then through a tower gate to the 13th-century villa. On your left, a tiny cloister with the most elegant decoration imaginable sets the tone of delicacy and grace that is the trademark of the garden's design. You proceed past an 11th-century Cortile and look down on to a shaded circular courtyard filled with hydrangeas, euonymus, variegated box and a fascinating combination of cream-colored and blackish-purple salvias. Past this shaded area bright light beckons you toward a terrace lined with very simple columns and an arched niche at the end. Looming high in the distance beyond the columns is the spectacular mountain range above Salerno.

Looking down from the colonnaded terrace, you tremble above a drop of over one thousand feet down to the sea. Unlike Cimbrone, however, Rufolo tempers the drama by means of a terraced lower garden, itself a gem of landscaping, with formal beds, sculptural plants, exotic flowers and a small circular pool at the center. Perhaps most satisfying of all is the one umbrella pine below the wall of this lower garden that soars above two towers of Ravello whose domes are just visible - a Renaissance silhouette of the highest order.

Ravello earns at least a day's visit. An ideal place to have lunch is at the Hotel Palumbo, where one sits on the terrace and overlooks yet another glorious vista down the hillside. Notice in particular a rectangle not much bigger than two tennis courts immediately below you that turns out to be the garden of the Palumbo - a miniature Italian masterpiece of design, with diamond-shaped beds separated by zigzag paths, a tiny grassy square at one end, the whole area shaded by a vine-clad pergola smothered with flowers of the wonderful pale blue plumbago capensis gleaming frostily in the sun.