This month's museum pick...

Boboli Gardens, Florence
Art and nature perfectly combined, Italian style

No other nation on earth comes even close to Italy in terms of possessing a casual, almost effortless, abundance of art. In almost every detail of life – architecture, food, clothes, tools – Italians live among splendors both ancient and modern. 

So it’s really no surprise that the Italians would have conjured up an extravagance like Florence’s Boboli Gardens – extravagant in the sense that it heaps on riches, one after the other: It’s in a world-famous location, adjoining the Pitti Palace on the Arno River’s south bank; it’s an outdoor museum that contains several masterpieces of sculpture and architecture; its design influenced many other notable European gardens, including Versailles; and its view of Florence from Forte di Belvedere at the top of Boboli Hill is perhaps the finest urban vista in all of Italy. 

While the Pitti is notable today as a great art museum, its first dose of fame came with its acquisition by the Medici in 1550. Florence’s ruling family immediately began an expansion of the palace garden, pushing it gradually up the slopes of Boboli Hill. They used the services of Niccolo Pericoli, an artist who had previously pleased the Medici with his garden designs for their villas at Petraia and Castello.

Pericoli’s initial designs were carried out close in to the palace, and he worked at them until his death in 1558. Over the next two centuries, his successors embellished the site with such additions as La Grotta Grande, a grotto containing Michelangelo’s sculpture, the Four Prisoners, as well as Giambologna’s Bathing Venus and de Rossi’s Paris and Helen.

The amphitheater, whose boundaries at first were simply demarcated by greenery, was later built of stone and ornamented with statues, and became a hub for Florentine theatrical performances. Over the decades, designers added fountains, ancient Roman and Renaissance Italian statuary, meadows, tree-lined avenues, and an artificial lake and island (L’Isolotto) to the gardens. Their final touch was a coffeehouse that opened in 1776, the year the gardens were first opened to the public. The coffeehouse still does a thriving business.

Visiting the gardens is easy and inexpensive. Admission, through a ticket office at the Pitti Palace, is 3 euros – a little under $4. The palace is an easy stroll from downtown Florence over the Ponte Vecchio.

By Patrick Totty