The level clearing in front of Montegalda Castle, where it is presumed they placed the bombarding equipment during the famous assault in 1387 described by the chronicler Conforto da Costozza, preserves a Venetian “pleasure ground” image, with statues sculpted by Orazio Marinali, which decorate the garden and the internal courtyard, and the little Palladian loggia.
The Montegalda garden was created precisely on this clearing, following the evolution of garden styles in Italy: from the Middle Ages, when gardens were rather small and confi ned to convents or palace courtyards, productive rather than ornamental, to the Renaissance, when they became expressions of the power and magnifi cence of the families who owned them, and surrounded rich architectural homes with plants, fl owers, waterfalls, fountains, woods and mazes. The strictly geometric fl owerbeds outlined ideological and symbolic pathways.
The garden is a classic Italian example typical of the close of the seventeenth century, keeping the stylistic features of a pleasure garden with the addition of large lemon pots at the intersections of the fl owerbeds or along the paths, in true Tuscan tradition. The cultivation of lemons in pots was very popular due to their decorative enhancement of the view, as well as for their precious fruit, not available to everyone.
The style of the Montegalda garden fi ts perfectly into the aesthetic canons for Venetian gardens codifi ed in the writings of the Renaissance architect Vincenzo Scamozzi, with its squared fl owerbeds, mythological statues recording Roman virtues, the fountain, the arbour at the end of the avenue and the loggia facing it.
