Boboli Gardens

Florence is the city of the Medici, and the Boboli Gardens are where that family turned a hillside into a statement of power. Rising behind the Pitti Palace, the main residence of the grand dukes of Tuscany, the garden was begun in the mid-16th century for Eleonora di Toledo, wife of Cosimo I de' Medici. Niccolò Tribolo drew the first plan but died in 1550; Bartolomeo Ammannati carried the work on, with input from Giorgio Vasari, and Bernardo Buontalenti added sculpture and the most theatrical of the grottoes. It became one of the earliest and most imitated formal Italian gardens, and its mix of long axes, gravel avenues, stonework, statuary and fountains was copied by aristocratic gardens across Europe. Unusually for its day, it opened out to broad views of the city.

The main axis climbs straight up from the palace. First comes the amphitheatre, dug into the slope and later lined with stone, with an ancient Egyptian obelisk brought from the Medici villa in Rome at its centre. Above it a double ramp leads to the Fountain of Neptune, made by Stoldo Lorenzi in the 1560s; its basin once doubled as the reservoir for the aqueduct that carried spring water down to the city. Near the palace, the Buontalenti Grotto, finished between 1583 and 1593, is a Mannerist fantasy of dripping stalactite-like surfaces and painted rock. It once held Michelangelo's unfinished Prisoners, which are now shown as copies, and it still holds Giambologna's bathing Venus.

In the 17th century Giulio Parigi laid out a second, cross axis: the Viottolone, a long avenue lined with cypresses that runs down through terraces toward Porta Romana. At its lower end lies the Isolotto, an oval island in a tree-framed pond, laid out around 1618, with the Fountain of the Ocean at its centre and statues of Perseus and Andromeda in the surrounding water. Smaller surprises are scattered along the paths. The Bacchino fountain shows the court dwarf Morgante as Bacchus riding a tortoise. The 18th-century Kaffeehaus is a rare piece of Rococo architecture in Tuscany, and the Lemon House was built in 1777 and 1778 by Zanobi del Rosso.

The garden is run by the Uffizi Galleries, which describe it as an open-air museum of ancient and Renaissance sculpture.

Getting there

The Boboli Gardens are in central Florence, about 1.6 km from the city centre, on foot from most of the historic sights. Besides the main entrance through the Pitti Palace, there are gates at Annalena on Via Romana, at the Forte di Belvedere and at Porta Romana. The nearest airport is Florence Peretola (FLR), about 6 km away.