Garden of Ninfa
Giardino di Ninfa
Interesting facts
- The name Ninfa probably comes from a classical nymphaeum, a shrine to water nymphs that stood on an island in the small lake.
- Barbarossa's army burned the town in 1171 because his enemy, Pope Alexander III, had taken refuge there.
- Within its walls the medieval town also had two hospices and guard towers set along the circuit of its defences.
- In the 16th century Cardinal Nicolò III Caetani had the architect Francesco Perugino lay out a garden here, but it decayed after his death in 1585.
- In 1765 the Duke of Sermoneta turned the medieval town hall into a barn; later Gelasio Caetani restored it and the castle tower as a summer residence.
- Pope Pius VI began draining the surrounding marshes in the 18th century, but the reclamation project was abandoned.
- Before Ninfa, Ada Bootle-Wilbraham had already created a garden at Lake Fogliano near the coast.
- Exotic plants thrive here thanks to an unusually humid microclimate, sustained by frequent rain and the cold, fast-flowing river.
- The garden lies on a major flyway for birds migrating between Africa and Europe, and 152 bird species have been recorded here.
- In 1976, with the support of WWF, part of the estate was set aside as a wildlife sanctuary, with new wetlands created to encourage nesting birds.
Why it is worth it
Ninfa is a garden grown inside the ruins of a medieval town. In the Middle Ages this was a prosperous place on the route of the Appian Way, with more than 150 houses, churches, mills, bridges, a castle and a town hall inside a wall about 1.4 km long. A pope, Alexander III, was crowned here in 1159; twelve years later Frederick Barbarossa's army sacked and burned it. The Caetani family tried to revive the town in the sixteenth century, but the spreading Pontine marshes and malaria emptied it again, and by the eighteenth century its last mill had fallen silent.
In 1921 Gelasio Caetani began turning the ruins into an English-style landscape garden, and successive generations of the family carried the work on: Ada Bootle-Wilbraham brought in plants from her travels, and later Lelia Caetani and Hubert Howard shaped much of what visitors see today. Climbing roses spill over the shells of churches, wisteria hangs from broken arches, and the clear River Ninfa runs straight through the middle, crossed by small bridges and lined with more than a thousand plant varieties from across the world.
The ruins are not scenery but the skeleton of the garden. Look for the twelfth-century castle tower by the lake just outside the walls, the remains of Santa Maria Maggiore, the principal church, and the eleventh-century church of St John. The garden proper covers about eight hectares within a 105-hectare estate that includes a small wildlife sanctuary; it is protected as an Italian natural monument and cared for by the Roffredo Caetani Foundation, which also looks after the family castle at nearby Sermoneta.
Getting there
Ninfa lies below the hill towns of Norma and Sermoneta, in the comune of Cisterna di Latina; the entrance is at Via Appia km 66.4, Tor Tre Ponti. Latina is about 13 km away and Rome Ciampino airport (CIA) about 38 km.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Garden of Ninfa is a garden in the territory of Cisterna di Latina, in the province of Latina, central Italy. The park has an area of 105 hectares, and is an Italian natural monument. The landscape garden within the park comprises 8 hectares and contains medieval ruins, several oaks, cypresses and poplars, grassy meadows, a wide range of exotic plants from various parts of the world, numerous watercourses and a large variety of rambling roses growing over the stone walls of the ruins. The site is run by the Italian foundation Fondazione Roffredo Caetani. It is open to the public at set times from April to November. Nearby towns include Norma and Sermoneta. Ninfa has been described as "the most romantic garden in the world".
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