The planting of the court is quiet and stately, and notably carries out
its spirit, with the gray-green of foliage plants and eucalyptus trees
and the gnarled stems of gray old olive trees. In its vistas from any
angle or point of view, the Court is peculiarly satisfying and
beautiful.



Court of the Four Seasons
The North Colonnade by Night

To stand in the midst of this curving octagonal court and hear, above
the whisper of the trees, the murmur of the four hidden fountains that
gush unseen from the base of allegorical groups of statuary, glimpsed
through colonnades, is to stand in Hadrian's villa of old, where we hear

"Fitly the fountains of silver leap,
Whose sound is as soft as the listless flow
Of streams that forever linger and go
Down delicate, dream-far valleys of sleep."

As in a dream, one looks down the last vista to the open rotunda and
crescent hemicycle of the Palace of Fine Arts beyond a lagoon that
mirrors them on its surface. Rising from the rich, green massing of
shrubbery and mossy banks, the rotunda lifts its proud head, encircled
with garlands of symbolical figures, as above a grove of Academe. Behind
it the soft red walls of the place glow like the fading embers of
sunset. These courts, strung like a rope of pearls between the two poles
of man's achievement--mechanics and art--are the heart of the
Exposition, and in them are treasures of color and form untold.