4. Italy

Abstract

‘Italy’ discusses the essential features of the 16th-century Italian Renaissance garden—terraces, symmetry, statues, water, and a balance between constructed and natural materials—that were to influence gardens all over the world both in layout and in content. The two best-known surviving gardens of 16th-century Italy are Villa d’Este in Tivoli and the Boboli Gardens in Florence. The design of Italian gardens through the 17th and 18th centuries is also considered, when there was a greater French influence. Many gardens became derelict during the political and economic difficulties of a fragmented Italy in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, but the past forty years have witnessed the restoration of many Renaissance gardens.