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These historic Renaissance sites are famous for their fountains, classical statues, and expansive terraces, the classic Italian garden is defined by symmetrical architecture, terraced hillsides, clipped hedges, and ancient statuary.
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00:07I'm on the second leg of my trip around Italy, exploring the country's
00:12loveliest and most influential gardens, and the ideas, landscape and history that shaped them.
00:24I began my journey with the Grand Gardens of Rome, made by cardinals vying for the
00:29papers. I'm heading south to Naples, where the sun has inspired gardens of poetry and
00:35romance, and right up to the north of the country, where the gardens are magnificently
00:43dramatic. I am actually genuinely lost. This time I'm in Florence, where the creative flowering
00:52we now know as the Renaissance, promoted for the first time in modern history the idea
00:57that a garden could be a work of art. In every direction, you see balance, order and harmony.
01:09I'll be visiting both public and private gardens in order to find out what it is about them
01:15that still has such a powerful resonance with us today. It does feel like a most extraordinary,
01:21dramatic gesture to have at the bottom of the garden. I'll also discover how British and
01:26American garden makers reinvented Renaissance gardens at the beginning of the 20th century,
01:31spreading the myth that they were always a flower-free zone. It's all the same colour, and
01:37yet building this symphony of green.
01:55In the 15th century, the Tuscan city-state of Florence became the artistic and intellectual centre
02:01of the Renaissance, which was a profound artistic and cultural revolution that, over two centuries,
02:06took medieval Europe into the modern era. Florentine artists like Botticelli, Michelangelo and Leonardo,
02:14and architects such as Brunelleschi and Vassari, produced some of the most glorious art and
02:19architecture the world has ever seen. The Renaissance also developed the concept that had lain dormant
02:26since classical times, that a garden, just as much as a painting or a piece of sculpture,
02:31could also be a profound artistic expression. In the 15th century, there was this extraordinary flowering
02:38of art and science and literature, and from that came this idea that gardens could be places that were
02:47beautiful in their own right, that expressed power and pleasure, as well as just utilitarianism.
02:51And it does seem to be extraordinary that 500 years later, we're still finding those gardens
02:58have something in them that is deeply attractive to us. And if you want to discover what that is,
03:05and what Renaissance gardens were all about, then you need to come here, to Florence.
03:20The gardens in and around Florence are among the most beautiful anywhere in the world.
03:31Whilst they were all created as works of art, they were also deliberate expressions of power, wealth and learning.
03:41And the gardens made during this period inspired a 20th century Renaissance revival.
03:46It was taken up enthusiastically by the expat community in Florence, and then by the rest of the world.
04:06The Renaissance, which was a new synthesis of literature, art, science and philosophy,
04:12was nurtured and financed by Florence's ruling banking dynasty, the Medici.
04:20The development of the printing press led to the spread of ancient texts that in turn inspired artists and philosophers,
04:26with ideas rediscovered from ancient Greece and Rome.
04:30At the same time, the Medici were growing ever richer as the Pope's banker.
04:35And they fostered a creative home for the greatest artists, thinkers and architects of the day.
04:47I'm heading now to the outskirts of Florence and the earliest surviving Medici garden, Villa Costello.
04:59The garden of Villa Costello was begun in 1537, in the later or high Renaissance,
05:04and has been restored to pretty much its original condition.
05:22The thing that strikes you immediately when you walk in is the symmetry.
05:27Everything is balanced.
05:30Whatever happens on one side is picked up on the other side.
05:33And the result is harmonious.
05:35And you can feel it.
05:37You can feel this sense of lightness, of generosity,
05:41that is completely prepared and ordered and laid out.
05:47And you might think that that would be dull and predictable, but actually it's not.
05:52You can feel it.
06:06You can feel it.
06:12Villa Costello was the home of Cosimo de D'Amici,
06:15who became head of state after the murder of his relation Alessandro at the age of just 17.
06:20Cosimo was an austere and ruthless man.
06:23But under his rule, the glory of the Medicis and Florence reached new heights.
06:28However, in 1537, he was hardly more than a boy.
06:33And Florence was in a state of turmoil.
06:36Yet one of his first acts was to commission these magnificent gardens,
06:40attached then to a relatively modest villa.
06:43To understand why Cosimo would stake so much on a garden,
06:47I met Giorgio Galletti, a Renaissance expert who oversaw the superb restoration of these gardens.
06:54Why was this garden made at that time?
06:58What was the impetus to do it?
06:59You have to think that these had also a symbolic meaning.
07:03The layout is a kind of symbol of this new order after 30 years of confusion, of fights, of bad
07:13economic conditions.
07:15They call it buon governo, this good government.
07:19The Medici really are the only one who can provide prosperity and happiness to Tuscany.
07:27In what way does it exemplify the High Renaissance garden?
07:32I think the layout.
07:34It was divided in 16 compartments in perfect geometric shape.
07:40It was a demonstration of perfect control of man, of space and nature.
07:47And also it was the first time that an axis is used from the grotto to the villa by two
07:55fountains.
07:56The main perspective is it was something new.
08:06So Cosimo commissioned the sculptor Nicolo Tribolo to make a garden that would be a display of his sophistication and
08:14power,
08:15that he could then show to visiting rulers and ambassadors as a clear demonstration of his wise and strong government.
08:23This aspect of a garden, being deliberately intended as a parade of cultured power,
08:27was a development new to the High Renaissance.
08:31But the layout and the way the design maximises the views of the surrounding countryside
08:35are based upon well-established precedents of garden design.
08:41The garden didn't come out of nothing.
08:43It was following a set of rules.
08:45They were best expressed by a man called Alberti.
08:48Now, he was a philosopher and a theorist.
08:50And he said, quite specifically, that gardens should have certain features.
08:54There should be parts of the symmetry.
08:56There should be flowing streams.
08:58There should be trees planted.
08:59And they should be planted in the form of a quincunx.
09:02Now, quincunx is where you have, and I can show you this really easily than telling you,
09:07is where you have your trees planted in a row like that, and then you have another matching set.
09:13And then you plant one in the middle.
09:16And what it means is, as your pattern builds up like that, you have that direction.
09:24You can have them in this direction.
09:26You can have them in that direction.
09:28And you can see this really clearly here.
09:30So, down there, you can see a line of trees.
09:32Along here, you can see a line of trees.
09:34Along this axis, there's a line of trees.
09:35And the whole point of that is, in every direction, you see balance, order and harmony.
09:54Renaissance thinkers were exploring classical scientific principles.
09:58And one of the beliefs was that God created the world along mathematical lines.
10:03Thus, the symmetry of Costello's layout was a deliberate echo of the universe's own ordered design.
10:12One of the great discoveries of the Renaissance were the rules perspective,
10:16where you have a vanishing point where two parallel lines meet.
10:19And, of course, where two lines meet at a viewpoint, at a sculpture or a niche,
10:26then that draws you to it.
10:28And it's as though they're relishing this new discovery.
10:31It seems to me that sums up the whole Renaissance spirit,
10:34because you have science, you have mathematics, you have art, and you have humanity,
10:39the human point of view, all working together.
10:50There is a modern assumption that the Italian gardens of the Renaissance were dominated by a single colour, green.
10:57Yet Costello is, and was from the very first, full of flowers.
11:04But when Giorgio Galetti started the restoration work, nearly all the original plants were long dead.
11:09So he had to do a great deal of detective work to find out what grew here 500 years ago.
11:16From my research, I realized that in the parterre there were dwarf fruit trees.
11:24And we started to reintroduce these dwarf fruit trees.
11:28And also there were flowers, and particularly herbaceous, because they could flower in summer.
11:36The picture you're painting is much more complex and interesting.
11:40There were more than 600 bushes of roses.
11:44Jasmine, Grand Duke of Tuscany, was collected here.
11:47So this idea that Italian gardens are just green with statues and water features,
11:55is at best incomplete and actually a myth, really.
12:09So it just isn't true that Renaissance gardens were simply a formal green geometry.
12:16Villa Costello, like every other Italian garden of the period, was richly floriferous.
12:22And with the discovery of new worlds, new species were starting to come into Italy,
12:27instigating a great resurgence in the science of botany.
12:33Giorgio has found letters from Cosimo, revealing his own personal passion for roses, jasmine and citrus.
12:42In fact, some of the 130 different varieties of citrus in today's garden
12:46were propagated from Cosimo's original plants.
12:52He was a man, not just with the money and the power to collect interesting, expensive things,
12:57but a learned man, applying that knowledge to botanical and horticultural affairs.
13:04And I think that's really telling about the whole Renaissance spirit.
13:10Every account of Cosimo describes him as an exceptionally remote figure,
13:15with a penchant for extreme violence.
13:17But the respect he demanded as a ruler depended as much on the evidence of his learning and culture as
13:26his ruthlessness.
13:27To this extent, the garden was all part of his control of the state.
13:31When the visitor came up here into the grotto, the first thing they would have appreciated was the cool.
13:36There would have been water everywhere. Water in these enormous basins and from the floor and running down the walls.
13:43But they would also have seen these animals, an extraordinary, great menagerie of animals.
13:49So you have here things like the dromedae, which refers back to Lorenzo the Magnificent,
13:55who was given one by the king of Egypt.
13:59You have the goat, because Cosimo's star sign was Capricorn.
14:04Up here there's a rhinoceros.
14:07And that refers to Alessandro, Cosimo's predecessor, who was a tyrant to kill people.
14:13And this is all about Medici power.
14:16Some of it positive, some of it benign, but power.
14:22The garden of Villa Castello was one of the first and most influential of the great wave of Italian garden
14:28building
14:29that took place in the second half of the 16th century.
14:32And its superb restoration means that it's the nearest thing to a true Renaissance garden that exists in Italy today.
14:41When I first came to the garden, I thought it would be formal and symmetrical,
14:47but perhaps a little bit austere and even empty in places.
14:52And it absolutely is not like that at all.
14:54And that very interesting point that Giorgio made, that it's a myth that Italian gardens didn't have flowers in it.
15:04This garden would certainly have had plants of every kind.
15:08And in fact, if you want to see a Renaissance garden as near to the real thing as you possibly
15:13could, then this is it.
15:21Costello was the first garden Cosimo made, but not the last.
15:25Whereas that had been a private show of his public power, in 1550, when he was still just 29,
15:32work began on a garden that would dwarf Costello,
15:34which was to be a much more public display of his private passions.
15:41Whilst work was still underway at Costello, Cosimo started another garden.
15:46Now, this time it was right in the middle of Florence, it was much bigger,
15:49and it was different in a number of ways,
15:51not least that it was intended from the outset to house and display his huge collection of sculpture.
15:58The traditional seat of Florentine rulers was the Palazzo Vecchio in the centre of the city.
16:03But in 1549, Cosimo's wife, Eleonora of Toledo, bought the Pitti Palace just across the river,
16:10and rebuilt it on an enormous scale.
16:13It's not normally open to the public, but I've been given special permission
16:16to take the elevated corridor that Cosimo had made in 1564,
16:21linking the Pitti Palace to the newly built of Fitzy,
16:24just so he could walk privately across the river, secure from and unseen by
16:30the jostling crowds on the bridge below.
16:41Today, the walls are lined with the Medici family's private collection of self-portraits
16:46by some of the world's most renowned artists.
16:51To just walk along and just see a Rembrandt.
16:56Rembrandt of an old age.
16:58That's worth coming here just to see that.
17:01At the end of the corridor, a door opens into the most ambitious of all the Medici homes.
17:08The Boboli Gardens.
17:22Throughout the Medieval period, sculpture had been primarily displayed in churches.
17:28But now, as Renaissance artists drew inspiration from classical statues
17:32that openly relish the human form, sculpture began to be displayed in Florence's gardens and piazzas.
17:41One of the most opulent displays of sculpture in the Boboli Gardens is the Grotto,
17:46designed in 1582 by the Florentine architect Bernardo Buontolenti for Cosimo's son, Francesco.
17:56In its heyday, the grotto's marble sculptures and walls of volcanic rock, shells and quartz
18:03would have shimmered beneath cascades and jets of water.
18:09In the corners are these four sculptures.
18:12Now, these are concrete casts, but until the 1920s, they were the originals.
18:16And they're by Michelangelo, the slaves.
18:18And I remember being taught about these extraordinary sculptures that showed the slave trying to break free from the stone
18:25that they're imprisoned in.
18:26And then, much later, they came here as a gift.
18:29Of course, Michelangelo, one of the greatest figures in the history of art and of the Renaissance and of the
18:36Medici family.
18:37So it's all here in the one place.
18:44The Boboli Gardens continued to be made and remade for over two centuries, getting ever bigger and grander until eventually
18:52it covered 111 acres.
18:55Initially, the steep rocky land behind the palace was levelled to make an open grassy space flanked by trees where
19:03Cosimo could indulge his mania for hunting.
19:05Then, some 50 years after his death, his descendants took this modest amphitheatre and enlarged it hugely to accommodate the
19:14new theatrical baroque fashion.
19:20There was a mania for performance of any kind, pageants but less, mass, and the bigger the better, because it
19:28meant that you had lots of money to spend.
19:29They cost a fortune and they would build volcanoes that exploded and have wild animals.
19:35They flooded an area at one time and had a battle with boats.
19:38It was a kind of elaborate theatre to entertain your guests.
19:43They would sit around and they would take in the space and the garden became the setting for the most
19:48dramatic performance possible.
20:07I met the director of the city's museums, Cristina Agedini, to find out more about Boboli's grand mass and pageants.
20:17It does seem that there was a big change in style when Cosimo went from Castello to Boboli. What instigated
20:26that?
20:26The garden is more and more the setting of public events.
20:31The place was that they were recorded, admired, and spoken about all over Europe.
20:37We have wonderful statements from the Venetian ambassadors that were very careful and exact in their reports.
20:46And they were describing magnificent festivals.
20:50Was this a new development, that gardens could tell these stories?
20:54Yes, it is a significant watershed in the history of gardening.
21:01There were political meanings in them.
21:03The gardens is part of a propaganda-expanded programme.
21:09What instigated that? What prompted it?
21:11The Medici, and especially Cosimo, were the rurals of Florence,
21:16and they were keeping peace thanks to their power.
21:20So, people should support power and, in return, they get peace.
21:25That's, yes, more or less, that's the meaning, the deep meaning of it.
21:35So the grand pageants were displays of Medici power,
21:39with the clear message that power equals peace and economic stability for the people of Florence,
21:45but only if they fell in line behind Medici rule.
21:50And, of course, it was a great idea.
21:53Boboli was private until the 19th century, when it was open to the public.
21:57But some parts are still out of bounds, like the Isolotto,
22:02an oval island made in the 1620s, surrounded by a broad moat.
22:11The public aren't allowed on this island, though I've been letting us a treat.
22:17It's clearly seen better days, but it's still rather wonderful,
22:21and it did have a different origin completely.
22:23It was a rabbit island.
22:24You'd keep rabbits and chickens on the island, perhaps there would be an abbey as well,
22:28and it'd be protected by a moat of water, and in that you'd have fish,
22:32so you'd have plenty of dinner stored at the bottom of the garden.
22:36And then, when they bought the obelisk and put that in the amphitheatre,
22:40they moved this, which was already there.
22:42So this is the original decoration.
22:44And you can see the enormity of the scale would have fitted into that space.
22:49Here, well, here, it's very strange, isn't it?
22:53I think all I like about this,
22:54it does feel like the most extraordinary dramatic gesture to have at the bottom of the garden.
22:59Bit scrappy, feels a bit unloved, but it is an amazing piece of garden theatre.
23:15The Medici dynasty ruled Florence for more than three centuries,
23:19and were the greatest patrons of the Renaissance.
23:22They'd also been instrumental in establishing the concept that a garden could be a work of art,
23:27as well as playing an important role in confirming their wealth and power.
23:48I'm off to a shop in the back streets to sample one of the more unlikely spin-offs from Boboli
23:53Garden's Grand Grotto.
23:59As well as designing the grotto, Bernardo Guantalenti built the Medici ice houses,
24:04where ice for chilling food was stored.
24:06And according to Florentine legend, when he experimentally chilled a cream-based dessert,
24:13he invented ice cream, to the subsequent delight of the grateful world.
24:20Now, this is the original ice cream, isn't it?
24:23It was made by the Medici.
24:26Yes, Bernardo Guantalenti.
24:28What are the ingredients?
24:30Cream, milk, honey, sugar, spices.
24:35Can I have a taste of it?
24:36Ofka, yes.
24:38To then that would take me back?
24:40Yes.
24:40For that first ice cream, thank you.
24:46It's very good, it's very custody, isn't it?
24:47Yes.
24:48Can I have a little container of that, please?
24:56You're welcome.
25:10The next stage of my journey will take me and the Renaissance rulebook right into the 20th century.
25:18Of course, now, with the benefit of hindsight, we can say that by 1600, the Renaissance had evolved into something
25:26much more theatrical that typified the Baroque.
25:30However, the values of order and elegance remained, and in one garden in particular, this combination was to prove enormously
25:40influential.
25:45Setignano is a village in the hills overlooking Florence, famed for his stonecutters and where Michelangelo grew up.
25:51It's also home to a small private garden called Villa Gambariya.
26:13Gambariya is a three-acre garden built on top of a ridge by Andrea de Lappi, a wealthy silk merchant
26:19between 1619 and 1680.
26:23Although its creation came 150 years after Alberti wrote his Renaissance garden formula and is very much a Baroque garden,
26:30Gambariya still holds true to Alberti's basic rules of order, symmetry and a clear relationship with the Tuscan landscape around
26:38it.
26:42Running the whole length of one side of the garden is the Bowling Green.
26:46One end is an infame, and 300 full and perfectly flat green yards distant, a pine-fringed, balustrated view over
26:54the Tuscan countryside.
26:57I think this Bowling Green is one of the great pieces of garden design.
27:01Apart from anything else, it's an outrageously ambitious thing to do, this enormous great length, made out of grass and
27:07a climate where you can't really grow grass,
27:09so they've had to bring in water specially for it, and then building these walls, some of which are retaining
27:17walls because they slice into the hillside.
27:19So the whole thing is monumental in scale in a relatively small garden, and yet it doesn't upset the balance
27:27of the garden.
27:37Gambariya was admired from its creation, but it was only at the turn of the 20th century that it would
27:43come to act as a kind of muse to a new generation of garden designers,
27:47as the idealised version of what a Tuscan villa might be.
27:57In 1896, Villa Gambariya was bought by a Romanian princess, the exotic and reclusive Princess Gica,
28:05who settled here with an American woman rumoured to be her lover.
28:10She married this Albanian prince who was a bit of an adventurer and certainly never appeared here at Gambariya.
28:20And Princess Gica's affections were directed towards her female companion, who was wonderfully called Florence Blood.
28:28Now, Princess Gica apparently was a great beauty, but her looks went and she never appeared in public without a
28:34veil.
28:35In fact, she hardly ever appeared in public at all, and people would just get glimpses of her through the
28:39window.
28:39But the one thing she was, was obsessed by this garden.
28:45By the end of the 19th century, the formal parterre had become a vegetable plot, and the princess embarked on
28:51a major restoration and remodelling of the garden.
28:55To get an idea of the extent of her impact, I met up with Mario Bevilacqua, professor of architecture at
29:01the University of Florence, and an expert on the garden's history.
29:05This map is what we call a cabreo, the lamp survey of the Gambariya. It can be dated to the
29:11beginning of the 18th century.
29:13It's a very important document because it gives a true representation of what the property looked like.
29:21The agricultural fields and the gardens, the layout of the gardens, and the villa itself.
29:27Were people concerned that she was going to ruin a historical...?
29:31Oh, absolutely not. I mean, she was not ruining anything.
29:34She was enhancing the property and she was restoring it to its former beauty.
29:40And she knew how it was, but then she wanted to recreate something which could convey a stronger idea of
29:48an idealised Italian former garden.
29:52And this is what she did out here.
29:59From the loggia, the garden is laid out perfectly below us.
30:12Princess Ghika kept the symmetry of the original 17th century layout, but replaced the ornate box brodery pattern with four
30:20pools,
30:20and the isolotto at the end with a green theatre, completely transforming the garden.
30:25She is said to have swum in the pools, but only at night, safe from prying eyes.
30:40She decided not to obliterate the original pattern of the garden.
30:45She decided to enhance it and create a new garden which reflects the Renaissance and early Baroque period.
30:53She had new trees planted, the theatre at the end, and she changed the four parques into water parques, which
31:03is a very original feature.
31:04And she designed it herself.
31:07What I feel is that there are lots of villas and they're beautiful, but what is it about Gambara?
31:13There is a kind of balance and magic. It's very hard to define about this place.
31:20It is almost the perfect villa, isn't it?
31:23The idea of a perfect villa.
31:24The idea of a perfect villa, yes.
31:27Gambaraia may seem very simple.
31:29Actually, its structure is very complex, and there's a double axis which is very interesting.
31:36You've got the open countryside this way, you've got the cupola and historic Florence down there.
31:43The idea of this garden which floats on the city and in the countryside.
31:56The princess's garden is quite complex, and with the box and the layers and the interweaving of it, that's very
32:03attractive.
32:04But it is quite difficult to read from a ground level.
32:08Certainly from the other end, you don't really see the water.
32:11There's no narrative in the layout.
32:14You don't quite know where to go or where it's going to take you.
32:16And when you make your way, there doesn't seem to be a logic.
32:20Of course, as soon as you get up to the lodger and look down, it's as clear as day.
32:37Although Gambaraia is a garden that has accumulated and changed over 300 years,
32:42the essence of it is straight out of the Renaissance garden law book.
32:46And Gambaraia showed that these ideas could work on a relatively modest, accessible scale.
32:52Visitors could see this and apply its principles to their own gardens.
32:59Gambaraia became famous all over the world, especially the British Isles in America.
33:04Architects came here and studied the Gambaraia along with the great Renaissance villas around Rome.
33:11It seems that that reputation has endured and it's lasted right up to the present day.
33:16Also because it wasn't so grand, so imposing.
33:21And so it could well be adapted to higher middle class used as a model.
33:27It's what we would call aspirational.
33:30People could aspire to it.
33:40The combination of the gardens beauty with its formality and elements, as well as its relative accessibility from Florence,
33:49meant that gardeners and designers were drawn to it like a magnet.
33:52And the mysterious and lurid tales of Princess Kika only added to the attraction.
34:01There's no doubt that this garden sparked a revival in Renaissance gardening,
34:08particularly the idea of a Renaissance garden.
34:10And then combined with the allure of the princess and her lover,
34:15Gambaraia became something of a cult and was regarded at the turn of the 20th century as the perfect villa
34:23and garden.
34:34By the end of the 19th century, there was a large expat community living in Florence,
34:40drawn by its incredible artistic and architectural treasures,
34:44and not least by the much cheaper cost of living,
34:47with wonderful Renaissance villas to be rented or bought for a pittance.
34:54They never even needed to learn to speak Italian, either,
34:57because by 1900, it was reckoned that one sixth of the Florentine population was English-speaking.
35:05There was also another attraction that drew some to Florence.
35:10There's a big influx of Americans and British people,
35:14and they came here for a number of reasons.
35:15The weather, the Renaissance, the art, the history, it was cheap.
35:19But there was also another powerful pull, which was sexual freedom.
35:25When people came here, they felt they had a licence to behave in a way that they just couldn't do
35:29back at home.
35:30They were so much more than the same.
35:38With its relaxed attitude to extramarital affairs and homosexuality, Florence offered an escape from the buttoned-up Victorian values,
35:47and its garden soon became the backdrop for the affairs and intrigues of the expat set.
35:57Around the corner from Villa Gamborea in Setignano, I'm off to visit one such garden.
36:02It was once the hub of this libertine Anglo-American community,
36:06and also the place where the 20th-century Neo-Renaissance garden was conceived and created.
36:16I'm excited to be visiting this garden at all, because it's not open to the public,
36:20and Harvard University, who own it, was a bit wary about letting me in.
36:24Anyway, they've relented.
36:25It's called Itati, and it was designed by an Englishman called Cecil Pinson a hundred years ago,
36:31and for a long time, it formed the basis of what most people thought an Italian garden should look like.
36:47In 1900, an American couple, Bernard Berenson, an art historian specialising in the Renaissance,
36:53and his wife Mary, rented Itati.
36:58Later, they bought it and began to make substantial alterations.
37:02Mary Berenson commissioned two 23-year-old Englishmen to work on the house
37:06and to create a new garden from the villa's old vineyards.
37:10They were the newly qualified architect, Cecil Pinson,
37:13and her husband's secretary, Geoffrey Scott, with whom Mary was having an affair.
37:20This was a ruse by Mary to keep Geoffrey Scott around,
37:23and Berenson tolerated this, but he actively nurtured Pinson,
37:27and as a Renaissance specialist, sent him to visit formal gardens around Florence for inspiration,
37:33including the nearby Villa Gambaraia.
37:40All the pictures I've seen of Itati have been the garden spread out.
37:43I didn't realise you came through a doorway.
37:46And immediately, you could see why people thought that Renaissance gardens were just green,
37:51because that is just solid green.
37:53There's no other colour through this doorway at all.
38:13What strikes me immediately is that where in a Renaissance or Baroque parterre,
38:20you look down, it's rather two-dimensional.
38:21Here, Pinson has used uprights.
38:25There are verticals everywhere.
38:27And what that creates are boxes of space.
38:31And I don't know why, but that's very satisfying.
38:34It's always a good thing in a garden.
38:36Very rare to see it just in one colour.
38:49Although I can see the influence of his British contemporaries, such as Lachins,
38:55Pinson has made a garden that clearly uses the idioms and structures of Renaissance and Baroque gardens.
39:01Central axis, absolute symmetry, green parterres and the Bosco beyond.
39:09It is astonishing that he was a complete novice,
39:13and yet he's made the garden into multifaceted architecture.
39:18He's ruthlessly excluded all colour except green,
39:22and the result is surprisingly modern and contemporary for a garden that was overtly inspired by the Renaissance.
39:32You see, despite all this green, there's a lot going on. It's really complex.
39:38And once you walk into the garden, it's got real substance.
39:42And I love this bit over there because he's created this texture and architectural shape just using green.
39:49Well, there's a wall behind that hedge.
39:51So he's planted a hedge on top of a wall and then a hedge in front of a wall.
39:54Obviously, the wall blocks your view and holds up the landscape, so you don't need the hedge.
39:59But by planting them there, he's created this structure, this building made out of green.
40:05So it's got a kind of energy, which is exciting, actually.
40:10It feels like something's happening.
40:21Giorgio Galletti's research at Villa Costello has clearly shown that Renaissance gardens were, in fact, filled with colour.
40:28So why did Pinson choose such a restricted palette?
40:32The historian Alan Grieco is assistant director at E-Tati.
40:38This was Pinson's first commission.
40:41He's not even 35 years old.
40:43When he's designing, he doesn't have that much experience.
40:46He's coming from a totally different tradition because the few sketches that we have, we know that he was very
40:52interested in very informal gardens.
40:55And clearly, coming to Italy, he suddenly discovers this whole world of the formal Italian garden.
41:02It is extraordinary when you think about it.
41:04Here you have a man who is not yet 25, no experience, and yet he makes a garden that becomes
41:10internationally renowned.
41:12It's an amazing thing.
41:14And one of the old gardeners who knew Pinson said to me once,
41:20Pinson told me, I don't know anything about flowers, but in any case, these gardens don't really need flowers.
41:27So I thought that was very emblematic.
41:30So when they visited Renaissance gardens, what they saw was basically what had survived of these gardens,
41:37and therefore the hedges and the green part was much more likely to have survived than any of the flowers.
41:46And I think that's where the idea comes from, that it is very much of a green garden.
42:03What I do like about this severely monochromatic garden is you have these layers that build up to something very,
42:10very special.
42:11It starts with the grass, and there's a little sound of that, and then that's built upon by the box
42:17hedges and different layers of those that interplay with each other.
42:21Behind that, you have the cypress hedge, clipped but wanting to grow tall.
42:25Beyond that, you have the home oak hedge, a different green, and then soaring up, you have the cypresses, majestic,
42:32all the same colour,
42:34and yet building this symphony of green.
42:50So the idea of the exclusively green Renaissance Italian garden was a misunderstanding by Edwardian garden makers,
42:59who took their cue from 400-year-old gardens that had simply lost their flowers over the centuries.
43:09It's become fashionable to criticise Pinson for making a green garden as though it was his personal fault for this
43:16misconception,
43:17that Italian gardens, and Renaissance gardens in particular, were just composed of greenery.
43:22But actually, I think the fact that Itatti is predominantly a green garden is its glory.
43:28If it had colours, it would be spoilt, and I love it for what it is.
43:41Pinson and Scott had launched a new fashion for Renaissance-style green gardens, but their partnership didn't last long.
43:48Scott ended his affair with Mary Berenson, and, true to the spirit of the place, started another with Bernard Berenson's
43:56ex-lover.
43:57Having captured himself a rich wife, he then lost interest in garden making.
44:01But Pinson flourished, and went on to create some of the 20th century's finest gardens.
44:19Before heading off to see a very different Pinson garden, I really wanted to visit a small garden made by
44:26an Italian, but astonishingly, I couldn't find one.
44:30However, judging by the abundance of flower pots on balconies and window boxes, Florentines clearly love flowers, so it was
44:38a puzzle.
44:40I headed off to one of the city's very few garden centres to see if I could find out more
44:46about this.
44:48Are there many people growing plants, making gardens, getting more, so that they're nurturing them, and making a garden with
44:56their hands? Is gardening popular?
44:58Well, with the new way of living in the last 20 years, the situation has been slowing down.
45:06Before, when there were no problems of rent, they had to work only one in family, it was very slowing
45:15down.
45:16Very, very slowing down.
45:19Let's say we're losing it.
45:23We're losing it.
45:29One thing, I see you sell seeds. Are people growing food? Are they growing vegetables from seed?
45:35In the city, no.
45:38The 90% of the seeds are sold exclusively by foreigners.
45:43Here is another foreigner who will buy some seeds.
45:49It's a little bit of a gardener.
45:49Mr. Canza.
45:50Mr. Canza, okay.
45:52I'll get the room, I'll get the room.
45:55Very good.
45:58Grazie.
46:00Buongiorno.
46:02Although Italians might not be a nation of gardeners, don't seem to grow much of their own fruit and veg,
46:07that doesn't mean that they don't understand and appreciate it with a passion.
46:12The city's markets are full of the most fabulous quality and range of produce.
46:17And all of it is grown right here in Italy.
46:19This is very good.
46:23I'd be proud to grow these.
46:25Fantastic.
46:26What does it say?
46:27Santa Croca just, you see?
46:29From Italy.
46:30It's dry beans.
46:32Serpenti, yeah?
46:33The cartel is wrong.
46:34This is Toscana.
46:36He's saying that actually they come from Tuscany.
46:39They have to, by law, put the area where it's come from, which of course is from Italy.
46:43It's home grown.
46:51Italians really understand food.
46:54And part of that understanding involves how it's grown, where it's grown, what the variety is, what season it is.
46:59Now, these are things that are really the province of the gardener.
47:01The average British gardener relishes those facts.
47:05So they, if you like, get their gardening kick through what they eat.
47:10And you could argue that the British get their food kick through what they grow.
47:24Farming and locally produced produce has always been an important part of Tuscany's wealth and independence.
47:31But despite its panoramic beauty, it can be a tough and unyielding agricultural landscape.
47:39I'm making a journey 80-odd miles south of Florence, to the particularly harsh countryside of the Val d'Orcia.
47:51This is the setting for Cecil Pinson's last Italian garden, and one of his greatest.
47:56Although it was created against the backdrop of the blackest period of modern Italian history.
48:06I've come a good two hours drive south of Florence.
48:09And this area in particular was very poor when the garden was made.
48:14And Pinson had to work not just with the garden as a private enclosed space, but connect it to the
48:20landscape all around.
48:51Pinson's last Italian garden.
48:51in Marchese Antonio Origo in 1924,
48:54they left Florence to live in the huge,
48:56but almost destitute estate of La Foci in Val d'Orcia.
49:00The Origos immediately set about renovating
49:03the impoverished tenant farms,
49:05with much help from the government's land improvement scheme.
49:07And they also commissioned Cecil Pinsent, now 43,
49:12to design the house and garden as a sanctuary
49:15from the harshness of the landscape.
49:20Pinsent applied his signature green neo-Renaissance structure,
49:25but the flowers that Iris Origo loved
49:28were, from the outset, to be an important part of the garden.
49:35I love the way that Pinsent does simple things extremely well,
49:40and he obviously loves hedges and uses them brilliantly.
49:43So, for example, this path has really changed
49:46a really unexpected but perfectly balanced proportion.
49:49So you have a five-foot-wide path and a wall there,
49:52and then a one-foot-high hedge, which is as wide as the path,
49:56which looks absolutely ordinary,
49:58but if you think about it, it's really radical.
50:02And, of course, the hedge is the backside of another hedge
50:05that goes down in front of the wall,
50:07so he's created these green spaces.
50:08But when you stand here and look out,
50:10you see what he's doing with all these hedges,
50:13because the site is very awkward.
50:15It slopes down in that direction,
50:16and it slopes down in this direction,
50:18and he wants to take you out towards the landscape.
50:21And to do that, he has to level the site.
50:23So instead of getting bulldozers out, he uses the hedgetops.
50:26And they start thin, and they go perfectly level,
50:28and they drop down, and then they level off.
50:30And the net result is when you're standing in the garden,
50:33you feel balanced.
50:33You have the harmony of the Renaissance garden.
50:36You feel centred, and then you can enjoy it.
50:54Today, Aris's daughter Benedetta lives in the villa.
50:58She knew Cecil Pinson when she was a small child,
51:01and after a lifetime living with her garden,
51:04her respect for his design remains stronger than ever.
51:10Pinson is credited with reviving the Renaissance garden
51:14in the 20th century
51:15and creating our concept of the Italian garden.
51:18How does this garden fit into that?
51:20It is... I think it's so successful as a garden
51:24just because it's a mixture.
51:25My mother was much more botanical.
51:29He was much more architectural.
51:32Also, Cecil had an extraordinary feel for nature,
51:36for the lie of the land itself.
51:39This house is oddly placed,
51:41but Cecil was not a person
51:44who would change the lie of the land.
51:47He would work with it.
51:49So the garden is always related to the landscape?
51:51Oh, yes, absolutely.
51:52Now, you knew Pinson quite well, didn't you?
51:55Yeah, I did, yes, yes.
51:57He had a lovely, dry, very English sense of humour,
52:01which you had to discover,
52:02because he was quite quiet, shy, very tall.
52:06I remember him dressed in brown tweed,
52:09which is odd, because he came in the summer
52:11and he must have been awfully warm.
52:12Oh, poor man. He must have been boiling.
52:14Boiling.
52:28Much of this garden feels very familiar,
52:31and I realise it's because it's essentially an English garden.
52:33You've got Pinson, who's an Englishman,
52:35and Aria Serigio, who was brought up essentially as an Englishwoman,
52:40albeit here in Italy.
52:42And what they've done is make an English garden
52:46that looks at its best in summer,
52:48but instead of summer being five days, if you're lucky, in July,
52:51it's at least five months of perfect weather.
52:59The garden has one last section
53:01that was made after the rest was completed.
53:04This is a large Cyprus-lined triangle
53:07that you look down on,
53:09descending grand stone steps to box hedges
53:12that arrow into the narrow end,
53:14along rather brutal lines,
53:17like blocks of troops at a rally.
53:24It's a clever, clever piece of gardening, this,
53:27because as you walk down through it,
53:29you have all those different lines of box,
53:32green lines, folding down towards the point,
53:35and that's Pinson doing his green garden thing
53:37with supreme confidence.
53:40What it feels like here is, 30 years later,
53:43there's someone at the height of his powers,
53:44great confidence,
53:46but there's a kind of brutality about it.
53:50What remains is impressive,
53:54but it's not charming.
54:06Throughout the 1930s,
54:08as Pinson continued work on the garden,
54:10the politics of Europe and Italy were turning ugly.
54:20The land improvement scheme that had helped to restore the farmland
54:24around La Foce had been an initiative
54:27of Benito Mussolini's fascist government,
54:30with the intention of making Italy self-sufficient in food.
54:34Now Mussolini started using Italy's great garden-making heritage
54:38as a propaganda tool,
54:40mounting exhibitions and garden tools.
54:45and in a deliberate echo of the Medici era,
54:48in 1938,
54:49Mussolini staged a public pageant in the Boboli Gardens
54:52to celebrate the visit of Hitler to Florence.
54:57The aim, of course, was to link fascism
55:00with the country's glorious Renaissance history.
55:06The fascists paraded the Italian garden,
55:09green and strong and forthright and beautifully designed,
55:13and it was very influential.
55:15It still is, really.
55:16Still people think of Italian gardens like that.
55:18But what the fascists overlooked were the Renaissance ideals
55:21of play and charm and decoration and, above all, of humanity.
55:41Funds from the fascist government had helped to renovate the Arrigo's estate.
55:46But after war broke out in 1939,
55:50La Foce became a sanctuary for Allied forces
55:52as the Arrigo family risked their lives
55:54sheltering escaped British and American prisoners of war
55:57who were trying to make their way to safety.
56:01And Pinsent, who had completed his garden only months before the outbreak of war,
56:05joined the British army as an officer.
56:10Pinsent and La Foce survived the war.
56:14And today, Alberti's Renaissance ideals
56:17that underwrote his 20th-century design are as relevant as ever.
56:26That view has become an icon for Tuscany,
56:29especially those trying to sell it for holidaymakers.
56:31I've seen it at Merport on a poster.
56:34But, in fact, you hardly ever see tracks like that in Tuscany.
56:37The fields are big and open.
56:38And it was made by Benedetta's father as a completely practical thing
56:42so that, as he improved the land,
56:44you could get vehicles up to the farms that lay beyond.
56:47And that was all of a piece of the way that La Foce was made.
56:50The garden, the land was improved, the people.
56:53And, actually, that ties in with the Renaissance ideals
56:57of improving the villa, the garden and the countryside around.
57:21My visits to these gardens both in and around Florence
57:24have shown me that the ideals of the gardens made here 500 years ago,
57:29marshalling nature with elegant, rhythmic formality,
57:32and a surprisingly rich horticultural palette
57:35was one of the great artistic features of the Italian High Renaissance
57:39and is something that we still instinctively respond to.
57:45The Renaissance, for the first time,
57:47took gardens and ordered them with harmony.
57:51Instead of fighting nature and defending themselves against it,
57:54it welcomed it.
57:55It looked for interesting plants
57:58and created a space that was balanced, symmetrical,
58:03but filled with delight.
58:05And also, incidentally, filled with flowers.
58:13Next time, I will be down south,
58:15where a much more informal and highly romantic style of garden
58:18came to thrive in the beautiful countryside around Naples.
58:22It bursts the constraints of the former Italian garden,
58:27despite itself.
58:28It can't help itself but be free.
58:35Stay with us here on BBC HD for EastEnders, coming up next.
58:39Next time.
58:40Next time.
58:41Next time.
58:54Next time.
58:57Next time.
58:58Next time.
58:58Next time.
58:58Next time.
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