Giardino all'italiana

An Italian garden is a geometrically designed garden which was designed and created a rule in the context of a villa.

Early Renaissance

During the Italian Renaissance (it. Rinascimento ) came about in connection with the marked preference of time for Villas on the edges of cities and in the countryside, to a flowering of garden art. Centers of this garden culture were Florence, Rome and the Terraferma the Republic of Venice. Leon Battista Alberti was the first architectural theorist of modern times, which basically dealt with the installation of gardens. In his 1485 book written about the art of building a section of garden art is dedicated. Alberti was oriented to in many of the details of the description of ancient villa by Pliny the Younger Like the ancient villas, where the garden an integral part of the plant was also the gardens of the Renaissance were part of an overall concept. Occasionally, the architect of the mansion was also the architect of the garden. According to Alberti villa and garden should reflect the personality of the owner. Unlike gardens of the Middle Ages, in which the point of demarcation against perceived as threatening outside world played a vital role in the Italian Villa Renaissance should as possible to a hill, visually integrate with the aim of the landscape in the garden concept. Within the garden, the area was divided into smaller compartments. The garden contained bordered with boxwood paths, caves, pools, steps that should allow easy passage of the suspension, and even the popular in medieval gardens pergolas and occasionally to a hortus conclusus reminiscent with high walls or hedges enclosed gardens, the Giardini segreti. Hedges, trees and Beeteinfassungen were generally circumcised according to geometric templates. Due to lack of water is preferred evergreen plants. Flowers found their place in the garden vases. As in the villas of Pliny the gardens were decorated with antique or contemporary sculptures. In some gardens on the ancient pattern fruit and vegetable gardens were integrated, which were also applied geometric.

In contrast to the French garden were removed in the early gardens of Italy emanating from the villa generous sightlines.

High Renaissance and Mannerism

The tendency, home and garden to merge into a perfect unity, was da Sangallo realized in a perfect way in the design of the Villa Madama in 1518 by Raphael, Giulio Romano and Antonio. The original plant was, however, changed or destroyed by the use of the building by the Italian State.

The design for the Belvedere of the papal residence by Bramante in Rome, the Italian garden was told at the beginning of the 16th century a stronger architectural outline. Bramante placed on a steep and narrow space to a three-level terrace, which were connected by a complex system of staircases and formed a harmonious whole together with the villa. The resort itself was equipped with valuable antiques of the papal collection. Although the garden Bramante was largely destroyed by the succeeding Pope Pius V, its design was far-reaching consequences for the investment of gardens in Italy.

The garden served in succession less the recovery of the owner and his guests, such as in the early Renaissance, but was the means of representation, and it was also used as an open air museum where the treasures of the owner were put on display.

Baroque

A key element of Italian gardens was running water. Unexpected water jokes, with which one could scare the guests, it was the first time in the non-preserved Villa Poggio Reale in Naples. They were admired and often imitated in the baroque gardens of the 16th and 17th centuries. Famous were the playful fountains of the Villa Aldobrandini at which the lust of the time to technology and machines shows.

The profusion of Baroque fountains is almost completely preserved functional in Tivoli, Villa d'Este. For more baroque elements of these gardens are next to the subordination of the ensemble under a closed iconographic program, the installation of a rear theater and a panoramic world in miniature. Also at the Villa d' Este but lack the relation to a dominant center axes of French gardens.

A perfectly preserved example of Baroque Italian garden is located in Lake Maggiore, Isola Bella, one of the Borromean Islands. On the rocky islet of the Borromeo family laid in 1632-1672 in a garden of ten superimposed, with balustrades, sculptures and vases lavish terraces, equipped with an overflowing abundance of flowers and decorative wild peacocks. Which is so important for the Italian gardens role of water takes over the lake here.

Gallery

Villa Lante: Waterfall and stone table

Monumental Sculpture in the Sacro Bosco or Park of the Monsters

Manor Cafaggiolo the Medici family in the 14th century

Villa Marignolle

Villa Petraia

Villa Castello

Villa Medici L' Ambrogiana

Villa Pratolino

Villa Petraia

Villa d' Este, Fontana di Tivoli

Villa d' Este, Avenue of the Hundred Fountains