Grandi Giardini Italiani continues to grow

The Almo Collegio Borromeo was founded in Pavia in 1561 by Carlo Borromeo, of the illustrious aristocratic Borromeo family, to provide an opportunity for boys from the less affluent social classes to study.

Passing through the palace's magnificent courtyard designed by Pellegrino Tibaldi one discovers the Horti, a garden designed in a thoroughly contemporary key and housing works of art of the calibre of Arnaldo Pomodoro, Gianfranco Pardi, Nicola Carrino, Luigi Mainolfi, Mauro Staccioli and David Tremlett.

The current Rector, Alberto Lolli, animated by the conviction that beauty has a redeeming and pedagogical force, has succeeded in creating a garden in the city centre that you would not expect, which is characterised as a place of social inclusion open to the students of the College, citizens and visitors of all ages.

The story of the creation of the Giardino di Ninfa is intertwined with that of three women: Ada Bootle Wilbraham, wife of Onorato Caetani, Margherite Chapin, wife of Roffredo Caetani, and their daughter Lelia.

The work began in 1920 with Gelasio Caetani who made a ruined medieval estate his summer residence, reorganised the water system and harnessed the power of the waters to create evocative waterways formed by the succession of small lakes, waterfalls and streams that meander through the vegetation. Compared to his English mother, Ada Bootle Wilbraham, he planted a large number of essences.

When he died in 1934, the Garden was taken over by his brother Roffredo, a musician and composer, and his wife Marguerite Chapin, an American and tireless patron of the arts, a literary scholar, journalist and art collector, as well as editor of two important literary magazines: Commerce and Botteghe Oscure.
If Ada delighted in creating vegetable gardens and planting trees, it was Marguerite who transformed it into an English landscape garden.

The last heiress and gardener was Lelia, daughter of Roffredo and Marguerite. A sensitive and delicate woman, she cared for the garden like a large painting, being a painter, combining colours and following the natural development of the plants, contributing to making this botanical jewel, one of the best known Italian gardens in the world.