The Best Italian Renaissance Gardens
The Italian Renaissance garden, developed in Tuscany and Lazio in the late fifteenth century, established many of the principles that have governed formal garden design ever since: axial composition, terraced topography, integration of architecture and planting, and the dramatic use of water. These ten sites preserve the tradition at its origin.
Villa d'Este, Tivoli
Begun in 1550 for Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este, the supreme Italian Renaissance water garden. Five hundred fountains drop down the hillside through a sequence of terraces. UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Villa Lante, Bagnaia
Designed by Vignola from around 1568, the most architecturally pure Renaissance garden, with its central water table and Fontana dei Mori. Often cited as the finest small Italian garden.
Boboli Gardens, Florence
Begun in 1550 for Cosimo I de' Medici, expanded over two centuries, the prototype Italian courtly garden behind the Pitti Palace. UNESCO World Heritage.
Villa Medici, Castello, Florence
One of the earliest Medici villa gardens, with Niccolò Tribolo's grotto, statuary and the iconic monumental Fountain of Hercules and Antaeus.
Villa La Petraia, Florence
Tribolo and Buontalenti's design for Cosimo I, with a remarkably preserved formal terrace and a glass-roofed inner courtyard.
Sacro Bosco, Bomarzo
The Park of the Monsters, begun in 1552 for Pier Francesco Orsini — a Mannerist eccentric garden of monumental tufa sculptures, unique in the Italian tradition.
Villa Farnese, Caprarola
Vignola's gardens (1556-1573) around the pentagonal villa, with grass amphitheatre and a hidden upper Casino garden.
Villa Aldobrandini, Frascati
Begun in 1598 by Giacomo della Porta, with a famous water theatre cascading down behind the villa.
Villa Gamberaia, Settignano
A small Renaissance villa garden near Florence whose plan was much admired by Edith Wharton and Geoffrey Jellicoe — the bowling green and parterre d'eau are exemplary.
Villa Garzoni, Collodi
The seventeenth-century terraced garden in the Tuscan hills, with its enormous cascade and topiary peacocks — late Renaissance verging into baroque.
Keep exploring
All of the gardens mentioned in this article are pinned on the interactive map. Use it to plan a route, group nearby sites into a single trip, or compare gardens by style and season.