The Parco della Gherardesca: a green paradise in the center of Florence

The Parco della Gherardesca, del Fuor Season Hotels di Firenze, one of the most exclusive hotels in the Tuscan capital, is a veritable green paradise located in the center of Florence that occasionally opens to the city with various events.

The cameras of the weekly La Terrazza di Michelangelo offer you a glimpse of this incredible park, pregievoli enriched by works of art.

Belonged to Brother During Chiermontesi, contained well- 3.488 exotic plants, oranges and lemons.

The extraordinary collection, however, was the result of ill-gotten gains, because the brother was deputy to the sale of salt and he used to use a bushel with a stave in less, by charging a quantity greater than that which trimmed to consumers.

Once you discover the fraud and the monk was condemned after his death the garden was destroyed.

Later it became the garden belonging to the palace of Bartolomeo Scala.

From the descriptions and vintage designs is inferred that the garden had a classical structure, with an ortho, a nursery and a ragnaia (that is, a grove with nets spread out to catch small birds), latter property of the Wool, who sold it to the Gherardesca.

In the eighteenth century, after the completion of work at the villa began to take an interest even to outer space, eliminating the geometric partition Italian (I was left only a small portion on the side towards Borgo Pinti) they proceeded to build a garden, with paths, shrubs, trees planted in groups without schema, a hot-pond, two hills and three small buildings decorative and recreational: you Kaffeehaus, an Ionic temple and a tepidarium.

Behind the monumental gate of Poggi, between two bodies of buildings, opens with a lovely fountain cherub against the backdrop of a wooded hill.

This garden was renowned for its botanical rarities, as the first mandarins grown in Florence and some valuable trees, that centuries-old, are still visible: a very large maple, a sequoia, a giant yours. Stunning is the collection of azaleas.

During the upheavals of the period of Florence Capital, the complex was affected by the demolition of the walls in 1869 and the creation of the avenues.

At that time he was made a monumental entrance to the garden on Viale Matteotti, of which occupied the architect Giuseppe Poggi sanitation.

After the destruction and neglect of the war period, the garden was a masterful restoration work of Peter Porcinai.

After being at the center of a new radical restoration, edited by Giorgio Galletti, today the structure houses a five-star hotel.

The palace Gherardesca with its appurtenances appear in the list drawn up in 1901 by the Directorate General of Antiquities and Fine Arts, as monumental building to be considered national artistic heritage.

Camera and Matt Lattanzi Franco Mariani.

By the number 32 – The Year of 24/09/2014