Boboli Gardens
One Sunday afternoon in Spring, you are lucky enough to be in Florence, Tuscany. The Tuscan sun does not disappoint as it bathes you in its tepid afternoon light.
After only mere minutes lining up in the relatively sterile front courtyard of the Pitti Palace, you purchase your tickets to enter the Boboli Gardens - Il Giardino di Boboli.
The 45 hectare garden is the playground for the Pitti Palace. Construction of the palace, Florence’s largest, was begun some 100 years or so before it was taken over as a residence for the Medici family in 1550. The Boboli Garden itself is contributed to Niccolò Pericoli (or, Tribolo as he affectionately known) who added the magic to this wondrous space.
Entering via the palace into the garden, you step out into a large labyrinth of green. There is an immediate sense of play to this place. Despite the fact there are many people here, the garden is so dispersed that you find yourselves alone at several points throughout your exploration of the Medici’s backyard.
First of all though, you are in a large oval space edged by life-size statues of men in Renaissance garb, and you feel as if you are on stage here. Your audience is formed by some of the greatest minds and powers in history. You take a bow and walk ahead, onwards and upwards.
Spying small tracks off to the sides of the main path, you duck through scrub, your face stroked by affectionate plants, and find yourselves in a small opening. Eerie and beautiful for its solitude and sense of abandonment, this space is filled with nothing much. Just walls of plants that open up to offer stunning Florentine views of the city.
Unusual and intriguing for many reasons, the Boboli Gardens are interesting for the use of the panorama of Florence as a point of interest. The garden stands above the city, and the lovely Tuscan views present themselves in front of you as if spilled from the edges of the garden. Most royal gardens are instead well protected to ensure that you cannot look into the gardens, but thereby preventing the possibility of being able to look out.
Back on the main path that veins through the centre of the garden, you continue on to find yourselves in various spaces, each unique and spacious, some more populated than others by relaxed tourists and locals that come here to laze on the grass or let energetic children chase birds.
First you wander up to the back edge of the garden, where you find a rose garden and ceramic museum. Ringed by a low brick wall, you seat yourselves along the rose garden’s edge, absorbing the view, tiling your still-winter-pale faces into the sun.
Today as you stand along the edge of the garden, dizzy on the heady perfume of roses in full bloom, you spy in the grassland below a girl with luscious long hair, wandering along a track created by the passing of people though out the centuries. She stops to pick flowers that peep out from the grass, smelling them, putting some in her hair, and some being thrown to the wind. She is singing, this beautiful Ophelia of Boboli.
Turning back to the garden before you, you somehow find it in yourselves to move from this spectacular spot. You wander into the ceramic museum. Plates and plates and some more precious and beautiful plates adorn cabinets. Here in Tuscany it is very likely that the same dishes served on these plates are still eaten to this day.
Back outdoors to meander aimlessly through the garden, you work your way downwards and sideways following a path that leads you to a massive park centre-pieced by Neptune floating above a pond. A stranger passing by agrees to take your photograph as you all set yourselves into your best Roman god poses, none of you outdoing that of the Roman god of the sea who stands proud behind you.
Continuing on, along snaking paths, you wind up in an enclosed garden. You separate, exploring the plants and sitting away from each other to create the illusion of solitude in this place perfect for meditation or reminiscing. In this maze of hedges and plants, you hear the giggles before you see the faces emerge from a small break in the wall of trees. A couple, faces flush like those newly in love - even though they must be at least 60 years old - hold hands as they walk out of this area to the main path.
Your group regathers to explore the next of the mysteries of the Boboli Gardens. A large pond stands in a relatively closed area where birds swim on the water, lemon trees fill the air with a citrus perfume. Children run circles around the pond whilst parents navigate its edge more slowly, engrossed in conversation.
The next area you discover of the Boboli Gardens is yet another large grass-lined field with a large face statue watching over the many people who laze on the grass. You wonder if this feeling is owing to the fact that it is actually Sunday afternoon, or if this place is just as calm and relaxing on any day.
Meandering some more, you find another nearby small garden, shaded by the overhead trees that stoop down to watch over the children that play with silly daddies, laughed at by mummies whose eyes gleam with smiles that are too big to be just shown on their lips.
Another few turns and you find yourselves wandering down a sloping path. Your nose knows before your eyes do that you are approaching the Boboli’s perfume market. A small collection of stalls are outnumbered by hundreds of potted plants. Soaps and dried flowers, and perfume after wondrous perfume are on sale here.
It is time to leave the gardens, so some of you buy small tokens of your time here, hoping that the Sunday afternoon feeling will magically be infused into the perfume bottle.
And you know what, when you put that perfume onto your pulse points the next morning, Monday morning, you know it works at least a little.
Tags: florence, italy, school, tuscany cooking class, wine class