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The Torrigiani gardens are the largest private gardens in Europe within the historical walls of a city. They cover nearly seventeen acres in the center of Florence.
Renowned in the sixteenth century as a botanical garden, the park experiences a second revival in the early nineteenth century, when the Marquis Pietro Torrigiani inherited the property from an uncle. He extended it over an area of almost 25 acres by acquiring all the surrounding land and, following the taste of the time, turned it into a Romantic garden. The task of re-designing the property, was entrusted to the architect Luigi de Cambray Digny, a masonic brother of the marquis, already known for the renovation of the Oricellari gardens. With his work Digny managed to combine the natural elements of the garden with the artificial ones, creating many masonic symbols. After Digny, the architect and engineer Gaetano Baccani, well renowned for having designed several works including the bell tower of Santa Croce, was asked to direct the work of the garden. He designed the tower in neo-Gothic style recalling the family crest. Almost twenty-two meters high and placed on an artificial hill, the tower housed an important collection of astronomical instruments, as well as a library. To connect the various floors of the tower, besides the still existing stone spiral staircase, there was a mechanical chair activateded by special pullays which permitted a rapid ascent to the summit.
Inside the garden there are other original architectural structures of great interest, including the Hypogeum, the Arcadia, the Hermitage, the Gymnasium, the aviary, the river Ladon with a romantic bridge, and the bastion of defense built by Cosimo I de’ Medici in 1544 against Siena.
Apart from the Medici bastion, preexisting and left standing for a good stretch, the remaining architectural works lead the visitor on a romantic-sentimental path from the dark "sacred wood" that sorrounds the crypt, symbol of the transience of earthly life, to the wide open spaces that surround the temple of Arcadia, symbol of an ideal of pastoral life. In the nineteenth century it was even possible to run into wild animals like deer and roe deer, which were a rarity within the city walls.
Other sculptures are to be found in the garden: the baroque piece by Baratta, representing Actaeon who flees after seeing Diana's face, the marble group of "greek chisel" depicting a bull killed by a lion, the statue of Osiris with the tables listing the rules for visiting the garden, the statues of Janus and Aesculapius, and the marble column dedicated to the great mycologist and botanist Pier Antonio Micheli, who worked assiduously in this garden and with other naturalists, founded in 1716 the Italian Botanical Society.
The gardens are also extraordinarily rich in species of trees and plants imported from all around the world, as witnessed by the presence of old and new greenhouses. Today, the Torrigiani family is still commited to the upkeeping of the exceptional variety of ancient trees encountered while walking on the lawns and trough the paths of the garden. There are three varieties of Cider tree: Cedrus Libani, Atlantica and Deodora, a great and rare Fagus tricolor, remarkable specimens of Sequoia sempervirens, Ginkgo biloba, Pinus excelsa, Pinus strobus, an impressive Quercus robur towering on the hill, an Olea fragrans, rates and then, planes, American oaks, oaks, cypresses, magnolias, lindens, holly, palm trees, bamboo groves and chestnut trees.
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Via de’ Serragli, 144
50124 Firenze
Tel 055 224527
Fax 055 229662
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