The Incredible Panorama of the Enchanted Garden

The splendid panoramic position overlooking Florence earned it the name of "Villa Belvedere": Villa Bardini recalls the "Casini di Delizia" widespread in Florence between the end of the 1500s and the first half of the 1600s, born for rest and recreation and surrounded by crops with not only productive but also ornamental purposes.

This is what a guide to Florence at the end of the 19th century quoted, and this is how it remains today: a Garden with a unique panorama of Florence that occupies a large part of a hill surrounded by the city's medieval walls.

Since the Middle Ages, the Bardini Garden has belonged to successive wealthy families: born for agricultural use, over the centuries it has been transformed into a splendid Italian garden, which in the early 1900s was used by the owner from who it takes its name, the collector Stefano Bardini, known as the " prince of antique dealers ", also as a spectacular representative environment, in which to welcome his wealthy clientele.

The Bardini Garden integrates three gardens, different in age and style:

• The Italian garden, with the magnificent Baroque staircase;
• The English wood, with its exotic elements, represents a rare example of an Anglo-Chinese garden;
• The agricultural park in which a new orchard and the splendid Wisteria pergola have found their place

Wisteria is one of the most evocative plants loved by visitors to the Bardini Garden. It may be because of the pergola wholly covered with these violet bunches or because it leads up to the Loggia del Belvedere from which you can enjoy the panorama of Florence and San Miniato al Monte.

Like the Garden and Villa Bardini, this flower brings with it an ancient history and a distant origin: it is said that the Wisteria was brought as a rarity from China by Marco Polo, even the effective arrival in our country is attested starting from the 1700s.

The peculiarity of this plant is its ability to grow rapidly, intensely, and constantly, making Wisteria one of the symbols of the development of human consciousness: the climbing plant, just like human consciousness develops quickly with a constant spiral movement up to embrace the outside world.

From lilac to violet, from blue to mauve to pink, the spectacle of Wisteria flowering can be admired at the Bardini Garden in spring, between April and May.

The Bardini Garden, thanks to the intervention of the Foundation, today represents an excellence of restoration: finally, this green heart of Florence has returned to beat in its city and for its city.