tuscan treat; Lord Lambton and Claire Ward have preserved the mystery and magic of this seventeenth-century villa, made its gardens bloom, and created a favorite haven for friends.

Byline: Catherine Fitz-gerald

Set among ilex woods and olive groves, ten miles southwest of Siena, Villa Cetinale and its once famous gardens were slipping into decline when they were discovered by two English travelers renting a farmhouse nearby: Lord Lambton, a former member of Parliament, cabinet minister, and author, and his companion, Mrs. Claire Ward, a knowledgeable gardener. Seduced by the mystery and drama of the estate, they bought it in 1977 and began restoring it.

Claire brought the villa to life, filling it with friends, children, and dogs, imbuing it with a relaxed English-country-house atmosphere. Hugo Guinness remembers that "a pack of barking dogs from huge to small would always attack you as you entered the house." Each summer the villa becomes a mecca for Lambton's and Ward's many children and grandchildren from former marriages. Rachel Ward, the actress, and Tracy, the marchioness of Worcester, married to "Bunter," the duke of Beaufort's heir, bring their families and friends. The children sleep in the recently restored top room of the Hermitage, which has a bird's-eye view of the villa below. Lord Lambton's only son, Lord Durham, a musician, often visits with his son, Fred.

Lunch at the villa is eaten outside on a cool stone table beneath the shade of clipped lime trees, watched over by the stone heads of Roman emperors. There is no knowing whom you may find yourself seated next to-it might be Jerry Hall or Kate Moss one day, the Tony Blairs, a leading newspaper editor, or a handful of Gettys or Guinnesses the next. While Claire holds her end of the table rapt, at the other end Lambton is extracting the innermost secrets from a young ingenue one minute, moving on to politics and Russian literature the next. These summer parties are infamous, and tales of the latest gossip and scandals are enviously reported in whispers back in England, if the newspapers have not got there first.

Cetinale was designed by the Baroque architect Carlo Fontana in 1688 for the arts patron Cardinal Flavio Chigi, at once an ascetic and a sensualist who was the nephew of Pope Alexander VII. A member of a powerful family of Sienese bankers, the cardinal-who collected paintings, erotic statues, fossils, and other curiosities-used Cetinale as a retreat from the intrigues of life at the papal court.

In fact, there is a little of the infamous cardinal in the aristocratic and mercurial Lord Lambton. At 82, he is a now-legendary character whose mischievousness and cultivation have captivated several generations. No guest can resist his beckoning figure as it disappears up a secret winding stairway to a hidden library full of rare books bound in scarlet and gold leather. Early in the morning he can be found hard at work mixing mortar to repair some steps or up a ladder trimming the topiary in the Lemon Garden, a lean figure in a panama hat and dark glasses, brandishing an unwieldy pair of shears.

Lambton and Claire have restored the original buildings-among them the Limonaia in the courtyard as you come in the gate, the chapel just beyond, the Cerbaia, a former farmhouse, and the Hermitage on top of the hill-and the gardens, but in the last ten years they have been creating many new ones. Claire has made a romantic English garden with rooms and walks laid out beneath the old kitchens of the villa where the potager once was. It is full of the heady scent of old-fashioned roses, lavender, and spicy pinks. Irises line the paths; caper and valerian grow from the cracks in the thick stone ...