33 Gardens Outside Florence

LEAVE THE VESPA ROARS OF FLORENCE behind and head to the surrounding hills to discover lovely small gardens with fabulous views. Here’s where Florentines have come to relax since the days of the Medici.

These are two that you can get to easily from Florence, by taking a short bus ride and walking about ten minutes. If you’re feeling energetic, you could even hike up to them from the city, just like folks in olden days.

In 1461, Giovanni de Medici, the son of Cosimo, bought this land because he loved the view of the city below. His dad thought it was a cockamamie idea: Why spend a bundle for a steep, rocky plot that you can’t even grow anything on? The Medici were originally farming people, and Papa Cosimo’s beloved spot was his country villa, where he’d tend vineyards and olive groves, hang with the peasants, and have friends over to read Plato.

His son Giovanni, a Medici banker, was of the new generation. Inspired by Pliny’s ancient Roman writings, he got the notion that a garden was a place to combine home, nature, and an awesome view. Forget about growing food. Forget about the walled medieval garden. His terraces would blend with the landscape and villa, like an outdoor room. This would be a beautiful place

to kick back, enjoy entertainments, and contemplate the mysteries of life.

Tall cypress trees line the entrance and pots of lemon trees are neatly arranged on the front lawn. Giovanni brought in lemons from Naples in homage to the mythological Garden of Hesperides. According to Greek legend, the earth mother Gaia gave this magical garden to Hera on her wedding day, when she married Zeus. In it was a tree bearing golden immortality-giving apples, guarded by Hesperides—nymphs of the night. In later years it was thought these apples were actually citrus fruits, thus all these lemons.

Giovanni’s overeating and drinking got the better of him and he died of a heart attack in his forties before he had much time to enjoy this place. His nephew, Lorenzo the Magnificent, took it over, and it became a meeting place for the Neo-Platonic Academy. Here was where Lorenzo would lead philosophical discussions centered on the idea that perfection and happiness could be attained right here on earth (not in the afterlife) through intellectual contemplation and the appreciation of beauty. Lorenzo’s artist friends—Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Botticelli—along with philosophers, poets, and musicians were invited. You can imagine him in these gardens leading the group, with the glorious view of Florence in the background: “Play the lute! Read me a verse from the Aeneid! What’s life’s highest vocation? Tell me your ideas!”

Villa Medici: Via Beato Angelico 35, Fiesole (055 597 252) The gardens can be visited by appointment only.

How to get there: Bus #7 from the Stazione Centrale di Santa Maria Novella, Piazza San Marco, or the Duomo, to Fiesole’s Piazza Mino, then an uphill walk.

This place is so pretty it makes me feel prettier when I step into it. Landscape architects come here to study it. Painting classes set up their easels on the grounds. It’s a vision of exquisite harmony: Cypress trees are immaculately clipped into soft, rounded shapes and archways. Crisp boxwood shrubs line rectangular reflecting pools. Pink roses tumble from trellises. A baroque stone niche embedded with shells and fossils holds a statue of Neptune. A greenest of green alley of grass stretches out to a low stone wall. That’s your photo op perch, with a dreamy view of Florence in the background.

All this on only three acres! A graceful mix of Italian Baroque and Formal English styles.

The garden was first put together in the eighteenth century, when those grottoes were built. Then in 1895 came Romanian Princess Jeanne Ghyka, part of the wave of foreigners who descended on Florence in those days. She made the garden her pet project, tearing out the raised flowerbeds and replacing them with the oblong reflecting pools. She was a mysterious sort, only occasionally having guests in for tea, and neighbors knew little about her except that she lived with an American companion, Miss Blood. In 1925, a widow from Detroit who’d been married to a German baron took over and she, Baroness Von Ketteler, is the one who’s responsible for the amazing topiary that gives this garden such a distinct character.

It was almost completely destroyed in World War II, and then bought by the industrialist Marcello Marchi, who restored it. Still run by his family, the villa’s been converted to guest accommodations. To stay here is a dream. Or just get here in April, when the blooming pink azaleas are a quasi-psychedelic vision.

Villa Gamberaia: Via del Rossellino 72, Settignano, open daily 9-6 by appointment, 055 697 205 (www.villagamberaia.com)

Golden Day: See the Villa Medici Gardens and explore the treasures of Fiesole—the Roman Theater and Duomo. Lunch at the loggia of Villa San Michele, a former convent with a facade designed by Michelangelo that has become a romantic luxury hotel. Views from the restaurant are transcendent, the food refined and delicious. (Via Doccia 4, 055 567 8200, www.villasanmichele.com)