Getty Villa: A Beloved Palisades Landmark Turns 40

As a young man, J. Paul Getty (1892-1976) had a passion for travel and a keen interest in history. He considered a career in international diplomacy but quickly found success working for his father’s oil company, earning his first million in his early twenties. He did not begin to collect art until decades later.

The six months he spent in Rome in 1939 wooing the woman who was to become his fifth wife were crucial for him personally and for the development of what has become a world-renowned Southern California destination– The Getty Villa, which celebrated its fortieth anniversary in January.

The idea of building a replica of an ancient Roman luxury villa to house his growing collection of Greek and Roman Art, Old Master paintings and European Decorative Arts grew gradually in Getty’s mind.

He first visited Pompeii and other cities buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in the early 1900s, but those months in Rome in 1939 solidified his enthusiasm for the ancient world.

His diaries reveal daily visits to museums and archaeological sites in and around the city, as well as trips further afield, including Naples and Pompeii, where he admired finds recovered from the ancient Villa dei Papiri (Villa of the Papyruses) just outside the nearby city of Herculaneum.

Nothing of the ancient Villa itself was visible to Getty, and even today it remains mostly buried underneath some 70 feet of hardened volcanic debris. It had been discovered by well-diggers in 1750 and excavated by tunneling, under the direction of a military engineer employed by the King of Naples.

Colored stone revetments, bronze and marble statues and charred papyrus bookscrolls were raised to the surface.

The last seemed to indicate that the owner of the grand residence had been Lucius Calpurneus Piso, a Roman aristocrat of the highest rank and father-in-law of Julius Caesar (i.e., father of Caesar’s wife, Calpurnia).

Piso’s exalted lineage appealed to Getty, who was pleased to own objects that had belonged to such famous individuals as the emperor Hadrian and French Kings Louis XIV, XV and XVI.

He felt that building a replica of the Villa dei Papiri along the California coast would provide a fitting home for his own collection of Greek and Roman antiquities, which he had previously housed in his Spanish-style ranch house, which had been opened to the public since 1954.

Getty also noted the Mediterranean climate of Southern California and took a keen interest in shaping the Villa’s gardens to resemble the gardens that would have surrounded an ancient Roman villa.

Although he closely monitored the construction of the new Villa museum in the late 1960s and early 1970s, J. Paul Getty never saw it. Despite his early love of travel, he developed a phobia later in life and spent his last years in a stately residence in England, unable to see the Villa when it opened in 1974, two years before his death.

Upon Getty’s death, the art world was stunned to learn that he had left the bulk of his fortune to his museum in Pacific Palisades, making it the wealthiest arts institution in the world. His generous legacy allowed the expansion of the small seaside museum to become the multi-faceted institution the Getty is today with the construction of the iconic Getty Center in Brentwood.

Getty’s generous legacy created the opportunity to renovate the Villa to more fully reflect the culture of the ancient world. In 1997, the Villa closed its doors and underwent a nine-year renovation.

Today, the refurbished site boasts enlarged galleries flooded with natural light, housing one of the world’s preeminent antiquities collections and important international loan exhibitions.

Every September, ancient plays are presented in a new Outdoor Classical Theater, and a number of public and educational programs take place throughout the year.

New conservation studios and training laboratories (operated jointly with UCLA), a research library and residential scholars’ program all facilitate the care and investigation of the collections and international loans.

Over the last 40 years, the Getty Villa has introduced more than 10 million visitors to the culture of ancient Greece, Rome and Etruria, including hundreds of thousands of students taking advantage of diverse educational programs.

Kenneth Lapatin is associate curator of antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum. The Getty Villa is open Wednesdays – Mondays, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m., closed on Tuesday. Admission is free but an advanced timed-ticket is required and can be reserved by calling (310) 440-7300 or at www.getty.edu.