The "Renaissance" gardens of Villa Madama, Raphael's late masterwork for the Medici popes, were actually completely recreated in the twentieth century, although little information about them has previously emerged. Based on abundant material from private archives, this book reveals an unknown story of the gardens' creation by an international cohort of designers and patrons. It further details how the restored villa came to be integrated into one of the most significant urban initiatives of the Fascist ventennio-the neighboring Foro Mussolini (current Foro Italico), and linked with the seat of the Foreign Ministry in a verdant garden park. This novel account of the synergy among these coeval projects traces the interwar development of this symbolic entry zone to Rome, demonstrating the power of urban landscape for constructing political and cultural identity. This narrative integrates the histories of architecture, of gardens and landscape, of urban form, and of restoration with the storia del gusto and political history. It also introduces the villa's owners, a French engineer, then an Italian count and a flamboyant American heiress, interweaving stories of their lives with their restoration of this significant heritage site, set against the political backdrop of the Fascist ascendency. The richly textured narrative yields a new portrait of the villa as an international salon for soft diplomacy, and examines the mythologizing of Renaissance heritage by ideologues and propagandists establishing the Third Rome. Ultimately it is a tale of diachronic political theater in the palimpsestic gateway to Rome, at a crucial moment for the formation of Italian cultural identity and Roman urban form.