Description
The Giusti Garden is one of the best-known Italian Renaissance gardens of the late period, tucked behind the family palace in the Veronetta district of Verona. An avenue of cypresses climbs to a grotto and a terrace with a view over the city.
The lower part is a large parterre of geometric flower beds, split in two by the avenue of cypresses that points straight at the hill. There are fountains, statues and a boxwood maze: not the sixteenth-century original, but a simpler version redesigned in 1786 by the architect Luigi Trezza.
At the end of the avenue a brick staircase leads to the grotto of the genius loci. From outside it looks like a little temple, with columns and a broken pediment; inside it is a real cave cut into tuff, with a barrel vault and three niches. It was once lined with shells, coral and mother-of-pearl, with water tricks meant to amuse the guests.
Above the grotto a gigantic mask keeps watch, attributed to Bartolomeo Ridolfi. According to tradition, tongues of fire could shoot out of its mouth.
Higher up, on the second terrace, the hillside opens into four artificial grottoes. A tower with a spiral staircase climbs to the highest part of the garden, the belvedere: a balcony with a balustrade right above the mask, with a small loggia pavilion beside it.
From up there you see Verona from above, among rooftops and bell towers: a second viewpoint over the city.
Before it was a showpiece garden, though, this was a working yard. The Giusti, a family that came from Tuscany toward the end of the 1200s, were wool dyers. In 1406 Provolo Giusti bought the land next to the ancient Via Postumia: this is where the cauldrons were boiled and the cloth was spread out to dry.
In the 1500s Agostino Giusti turned that workshop into a calling card. He joined and rebuilt the old buildings along the street into a palace with a portico of six arches at the entrance, and behind it he laid out the garden in the fashion of the day.
The Second World War hit it hard: afterward many plants had been uprooted or broken. The care given to the greenery since the war has largely restored its former beauty.
The lower part is a large parterre of geometric flower beds, split in two by the avenue of cypresses that points straight at the hill. There are fountains, statues and a boxwood maze: not the sixteenth-century original, but a simpler version redesigned in 1786 by the architect Luigi Trezza.
At the end of the avenue a brick staircase leads to the grotto of the genius loci. From outside it looks like a little temple, with columns and a broken pediment; inside it is a real cave cut into tuff, with a barrel vault and three niches. It was once lined with shells, coral and mother-of-pearl, with water tricks meant to amuse the guests.
Above the grotto a gigantic mask keeps watch, attributed to Bartolomeo Ridolfi. According to tradition, tongues of fire could shoot out of its mouth.
Higher up, on the second terrace, the hillside opens into four artificial grottoes. A tower with a spiral staircase climbs to the highest part of the garden, the belvedere: a balcony with a balustrade right above the mask, with a small loggia pavilion beside it.
From up there you see Verona from above, among rooftops and bell towers: a second viewpoint over the city.
Before it was a showpiece garden, though, this was a working yard. The Giusti, a family that came from Tuscany toward the end of the 1200s, were wool dyers. In 1406 Provolo Giusti bought the land next to the ancient Via Postumia: this is where the cauldrons were boiled and the cloth was spread out to dry.
In the 1500s Agostino Giusti turned that workshop into a calling card. He joined and rebuilt the old buildings along the street into a palace with a portico of six arches at the entrance, and behind it he laid out the garden in the fashion of the day.
The Second World War hit it hard: afterward many plants had been uprooted or broken. The care given to the greenery since the war has largely restored its former beauty.