The Boboli gardens

The Boboli gardens, located behind Palazzo Pitti, have always been considered the green lungs of the city of Florence. Visitors in search of tranquility, far from the chaos of the city, or of some cool air during the sunny summer days, will find a joyful welcome in the gardens with its tree-lined avenues, shady lawns and floral scents.

The first nucleus of the garden dates back to 1400 when Messer Luca Pitti purchased the land that was located near Santa Felicita to build the new family palace in the Oltrarno area. This was the agricultural area and garden of the Borgolo family, from which the name "Boboli" comes.

A decisive turning point occurred in 1549 when the wealthy Eleanor of Toledo, Cosimo’s wife, purchased the incomplete palace from the Pitti family with the annexed land to build a new ducal residence. The transformation of the garden was entrusted by the Medici family to Niccolò Tribolo, a landscaper in great demand at the time. Following the untimely death of Tribolo, the gardens were completed by other court architects such as Giorgio Vasari, Bartolomeo Ammannati and the imaginative Bernardo Buontalenti who built the famous "Grotta", where Michelangelo's Prisoners were located for a time.

In the following centuries, both the Medici and Lorraine families continued to work on the gardens adding a rich collection of sculptures and creating new green areas. The size of the garden grew more and more under the direction of the most important architects of the time until the nineteenth century. The layout we can admire today derives from the redevelopment works that took place after the Second World War.

The Boboli Gardens represent one of the most important examples of an Italian garden and its model inspired many other European royal garden designs such as the ones in Versailles.

Strolling down the garden lanes it is possible to discover small hidden jewels like the Amphitheater with an Egyptian obelisk in the center; the Viottolone which leads to the Fountain of Neptune; the Prato del Cavaliere, built on a part of the ramparts made by Michelangelo; and the green tower of the Kaffeehaus, a rare example of a Rococo building in Tuscany.