The view of Venice is characterized by strong Byzantine, Gothic and Renaissance influences. These are certainly the most famous peculiarities, while the city also welcomes hidden areas that only a few have been able to visit.
Among all the hidden or less frequented places in the city, the gardens are certainly a gem not to be missed when exploring a more peculiar Venice. Not only does the city feature green areas near convents and monasteries, but it also offers real Napoleonic gardens. Here are some of the most popular destinations:
The marvelous Napoleonic Giardini Reali, located in the heart of San Marco and restored by the Venice Gardens Foundation, are distributed over an area of five thousand square meters and have been open to the public again since December 2019.
In fact, in 2014, the foundation was entrusted with the task of restoring the original formal aspects of the gardens and their respective botanical habitat. In completing this project, conceived by architects Paolo Pejrone and Alberto Torsello, Venice Gardens Foundation has established a partnership with Assicurazioni Generali.
During the visit, and thanks to the interventions carried out, today it is possible to admire a typical historic greenhouse adorned with windows opening onto the garden, a central pavilion dedicated to artistic and cultural activities, the Padiglione del Caffè, a drawbridge decorated with original elements in cast iron and a long pergola adorned with columns.
On the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, located in front of Piazza San Marco, stands the majestic Basilica designed by Andrea Palladio. The Monastery and the adjacent areas, the use of which was granted to the Giorgio Cini Foundation in 1951, today constitute one of the most relevant institutional sites of the foundation as well as one of the most evocative exhibition location.
In 2011, the Giorgio Cini Foundation dedicated a labyrinth to the writer Jorge Luis Borges as a tribute to his work entitled The Garden of Forking Paths. The Borges Labyrinth, open to the public, can be visited while listening to the music performed by the La Fenice Theatre Orchestra. The work consists of a kilometer of paths and forks to be wandered with audio guides in order to be accompanied in the background by the Walking The Labyrinth suite, part of the album The Borges Labyrinth & Vatican Chapels live, a soundtrack experience.
As the title suggests, the music was created not only for the visit to the Borges Labyrinth, but also for the opening of the Vatican Chapels, religious structures scattered across the island designed to constitute the widespread Vatican Pavilion and designed by 10 different internationally renowned architects. This project was developed in correspondence to the 2018 Architecture Biennale.
The Biennale Gardens, created by Napoleon at the end of the 19th century on the eastern side of the city in the Castello district, are public gardens that constitute the venue of the Biennale pavilions.
Today the gardens host the Central Pavilion and twenty-nine other pavilions dedicated to foreign countries. However, this green part of the city remains freely accessible even during the Biennale, when access is limited only to the set up areas. It is not only worth visiting these gardens for the art and architecture exhibitions that the Biennale alternates from year to year, but also for the presence of eloquent testimonies of twentieth-century architecture.
For fans of Carlo Scarpa‘s style, the Biennale Gardens host some of his most original contributions from the 1950s such as the Sculpture Garden in the Central Pavilion, the ticket office areas and the Venezuela Pavilion.
Whether you have enough time to explore the vast gardens of the Biennale and the scattered pavilions, or just a few hours for a coffee in the Royal Gardens or a short tour in the Borges Labyrinth, these places constitute precious opportunities to immerse yourself in nature while being in one of the world’s most famous floating city.
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