Beyond bounderies: in the historical gardens of Rome and its environs

A garden has always been a place of history, myth, fantasy, art and poetry, music, literature and spirituality: from the legendary hanging gardens of Nineveh and Babylon, traditionally considered as one of the Seven Wonders, to the Homeric ones of the palace of Alcinoo; from the Greek gardens adorned with gymnasia, porticoes, temples, to the gardens of sumptuous ancient Roman villas, full of buildings and water; from the luxuriant Arab gardens annexed to the palaces with fantastic architectures, which greatly influenced medieval European gardens, to the Chinese and Japanese ones, where shapes, colours and symbols lead to inner peace. A garden is always a mirror and path of one’s soul: for those who create and take care of it, but also for those who only walks through it. A garden is the place to rediscover the pleasure of contemplation and at the same time take the difficult path towards balance and harmony.

In almost all of the region of Latium, including Rome, some gardens have preserved, more or less clearly, their original idea, for which they were conceived: from the ancient Roman ones to the medieval, Renaissance and 18th or 19th century ones up to the eclectic ones of the 19th or 20th century. Some of these gardens worked as a model for the 17th-century French gardens and for the 18th or 19th century Anglo-Saxon ones…

Hereunder my proposals of strolls in gardens, with or without Art Education workshops:

1. Ancient and Renaissance Rome in the garden compared:
   a. the Imperial Palace-garden and the Horti Farnese on the Palatine;
   b. Hadrian’s Villa and Villa d’Este in Tivoli
2. Garden fragment places and their sculptural and pictorial ornaments in ancient Rome:
   a. Maecenas Auditorium (special opening);
   b. statuary and painted gardens in the collections of Palazzo Massimo and the Capitoline Museums.
3. The Renaissance in the garden:
   a. villa Madama (special opening)
4. The late Renaissance in the garden:
   a. From Palazzo Farnese and its large garden in Caprarola, to Villa Lante in Bagnaia; and the Sacred Forest of Bomarzo in Tuscia;
   b. villa Aldobrandini in Frascati
5. In the garden from the 17th to the 18th century:
   a. Villa Borghese (with or without a visit to the Gallery);
   b. villa Pamphilj;
   c. the Chigi park in Ariccia
6. A leap of centuries in the garden, from the Renaissance to the Neo-Renaissance between the 19th and 20th centuries:
   a. the Vatican gardens (special visit);
   b. Villa Celimontana at Celio;
   c. Villa Sciarra in Monteverde;
   d. the gardens of Landriana by Russel Page;
   c. the botanical garden at Trastevere
   d. the municipal Rose Garden on the Aventine

Please ask for further information and I will custumize the best itinerary, with or without Art Education workshops, for you