Description
The Giardino Bardini is a historic garden in Florence, in the Oltrarno, climbing for about four hectares up the hill below Piazzale Michelangelo, from Palazzo dei Mozzi to Villa Bardini. From the top you get a spectacular view of the city.
The most scenic part is the grand Baroque staircase, which climbs to a small belvedere overlooking Florence. All around are six mosaic-decorated fountains and a little rustic grotto with fake terracotta plants that blend in with the real ones.
The wisteria pergola, of several varieties, blooms in April and offers glimpses with the city in the background. There are also roses, irises and hydrangeas, a small temple and a green theater carved into a hollow of the land, in the lower part.
In the 19th century the neighboring villa had an English garden, with groves, winding paths and a Kaffeehaus with a grotto. A second grotto, in the highest part, dates from the same period.
A garden full of traps for art experts. When the antiques dealer Stefano Bardini bought it in 1913, he filled it with statues and decorations from everywhere, authentic, reassembled or faked: it was up to the connoisseur to tell one from the other.
Bardini had bought a hill with centuries of history. It had belonged to the Mozzi since the Middle Ages: a walled kitchen garden behind their palace, mentioned as early as 1259, and higher up olive trees on steeply sloping terraces.
After Bardini and his son Ugo, who died in 1965, came decades of neglect. The restoration, begun in 2000, lasted five years, with the return of fruit trees, plants and ornaments, and in 2007 the garden opened to the public.
For much of the 20th century the garden was also a pride for an exceptional collection of azaleas and citrus fruits, later distributed to other parks and gardens.
The most scenic part is the grand Baroque staircase, which climbs to a small belvedere overlooking Florence. All around are six mosaic-decorated fountains and a little rustic grotto with fake terracotta plants that blend in with the real ones.
The wisteria pergola, of several varieties, blooms in April and offers glimpses with the city in the background. There are also roses, irises and hydrangeas, a small temple and a green theater carved into a hollow of the land, in the lower part.
In the 19th century the neighboring villa had an English garden, with groves, winding paths and a Kaffeehaus with a grotto. A second grotto, in the highest part, dates from the same period.
A garden full of traps for art experts. When the antiques dealer Stefano Bardini bought it in 1913, he filled it with statues and decorations from everywhere, authentic, reassembled or faked: it was up to the connoisseur to tell one from the other.
Bardini had bought a hill with centuries of history. It had belonged to the Mozzi since the Middle Ages: a walled kitchen garden behind their palace, mentioned as early as 1259, and higher up olive trees on steeply sloping terraces.
After Bardini and his son Ugo, who died in 1965, came decades of neglect. The restoration, begun in 2000, lasted five years, with the return of fruit trees, plants and ornaments, and in 2007 the garden opened to the public.
For much of the 20th century the garden was also a pride for an exceptional collection of azaleas and citrus fruits, later distributed to other parks and gardens.