Gardens

We always love going to Florence because it gives us a chance to spend time with an old friend, Lior, who is one of the city’s best guides. Lior is always keen to tailor our walking tour to the interests of the group, and this group was interested in the history of Italian art. Lior was delighted: his special interest is in Renaissance, Mannerist and Baroque art. He explained the differences between these fascinating art periods and took us to Santa Trinita in the centre of Florence where we learned to look at paintings by artists such as Monaco and Ghirlandaio in a completely new light.

Despite the influx of tourists, Florence retains plenty of unique gems, such as the pietre dure workshops that Lior took us to visit and, some of the group would say, the absolutely world class shopping that many of us indulged in during the free hours we had!

There are several wonderful villas and their associated gardens in and around Florence, and during our time there we visited several of them: the Torrigiani, the largest private garden within a European city, where the marquis himself took us on tour and regaled us with family stories; the Bardini garden high above the city where you feel as if you can reach out and touch the rooftops; Castello, where Cosimo de Medici grew up and where our group was charmed by the high school students who were practising their English by guiding visitors around the gardens; and Villa Gamberaia, beautiful even in the rain!

On the way to Verona we stopped in at a traditional acetaia outside of Modena, where we learned how Traditional Balsamic Vinegar of Modena is made, sampled some of the goods and contributed to Italy’s gross domestic product with our purchases.

We arrived in Verona to rain and more rain but this did nothing to dampen the group’s spirits. Brandishing umbrellas, our intrepid travellers set off to explore the cityscape with its fabulous urban architecture, glorious red marble pavements peppered with fossils, its central Roman arena and its piazze buzzing with street life.

Of all the cities we visited this had to be the group’s big favourite. And the city rewarded us: on our second day the sun came out. What better way to see Giardino Giusti, a little marvel hidden away in the centre of Verona, with is maze, low box hedges, lines of cypresses that were planted by the original owner to remind him of his Tuscan origins. We climbed the hill for the gorgeous view back to the city. From Verona we took a day trip to Villa Pisani, the fabulous Palladian  inspired Veneto villa, which truly took our collective breath away. Our keen gardeners found unusual specimens in the gardens, including an English wood complete with wild flowers; we were also fascinated to learn about the lifestyle of the Venetians during the period in which these villas were built and how the architecture functioned.

The final stage of our tour took us north to the lakes, to Bellagio on Lake Como, where we enjoyed its spectacular scenery, visited the gardens at Villa Carlotta and took a day trip to Lake Maggiore to visit what might have been the favourite garden of the trip, Isola Bella. This fantastic and arguably over the top Baroque garden, complete with white peacocks strutting the paths, was built by the Borromean family on an island in the middle of the lake.

Lake Como turned on the most beautiful weather for the last day of our tour, and we departed Bellagio and Lake Como on a glorious sunny day. The group had discovered not only the beauty of Italian gardens, but the joys of Italian wine and food as well – as one member of the group said in parting, ‘It was much, much more than the gardens!’

We’re running our Great Gardens of Italy tour again in the Italian Spring of 2018 when we’ll be including Castel Gandolfo, the location of the Pope’s summer palace, for the first time.