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The Della Gherardesca garden, one of the largest inside the circuit of the Florentine ring-road, conserves the appearance it assumed after the intervention of Giuseppe Poggi in the 1870s, a re-elaboration of the great English-style garden begun by Count Guido Alberto della Gherardesca in the second decade of the same century. However, the real origins of the garden date to the end of the 15th century, when Bartolomeo Scala established his residence near the Porta Pinti following his purchase of lands formerly belonging to the church after they had been freed by papal concession. In the declaration of the assets of Bartolomeo Scala in 1480 there is mention of “una casa per mia abitazione chon ortj … un poderuzzo chon casetta da lavoratore allato alla mia casa di pinti verso il canto a monteloro comperato da frati di cestello … un poderuzzo in detto luogo presso le mura dove o fatto el vivaio el monte e fossoni e via e pratello e la loggia e studio …”.21 Scala’s property already had a structure that would remain unchanged in the following centuries, despite extensions and modifications: an area used as a garden, belonging to the house, and an agricultural area with productive characteristics. Already present is the mound obtained from the excavation of the nursery, confirmed
v The country basin, in a photograph of the
by the description of the Dominican monk and essayist Agostino del Riccio (ca. 1580), who also mentions a ‘ghiacciaia’, or deposit for ice.2 Del Riccio offers up an image of the garden with aspects of for-
second half of the 19th century, Archivio della Gherardesca,
mal research, evinced by the presence of “box espaliers” and “box spheres” located in the secret garden.
Florence.
The definitive layout of the trapezoidal-shaped area of land situated in the corner between the walls and v
the Via del Mandorlo (today’s Via Giuseppe Giusti) was reached in 1585, however, following the purchase by Cardinal Alessandro de’ Medici, who incorporated various plots of land previously sold by Scala with others that he bought from neighbouring property-owners. With these annexations the property assumed the surface-area that would remain more or less unaltered up to the present day. Dating from this period is the ‘ragnaia’ planted between two walls, visible, along the northern boundary, in Buonsignori’s map of Florence of 1583. Alessandro de’ Medici, who became pope with the name of Leo XI, died in 1605, leaving the house and the Pinti lands to his sister Costanza, the widow of Ugo della Gherardesca. The tripartite division of the garden created by Scala was still in existence in 1673, as we read in the contract between Count Ugo and the gardener Michele Pillori: “Il Giardino grande a vigna …altro giardino anti il palazzo et Orto detto Ortaccio”.3 As with most classical Tuscan gardens, an ornamental area is identifiable, probably used as a flower garden, a vegetable garden used by the servants, which is evident from the use of the somewhat dismissive term “ortaccio”, and an agricultural area with productive characteristics. In 1698 the garden was equipped with a “large room for vases”, a description often used to describe an area for the storage of citrus plants in vases. This large room can be identified as the building called Serra Fredda in the 19th century, given its south-facing location that would have
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