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THE GARDENS OF PALERMO Palermo, once known as the “garden city” because of its many parks and public gardens, still preserves testimonies of these past memories. Apart from some private villas - especially those at Piana dei Colli built in the eighteenth century as summer residences - the city gardens open to the public are still functional and well kept.
Giardino Inglese This “English Garden” was laid out in 1850-51 by the architect Giovan Battista Filippo Basile in what was considered to be the English manner, following the lie of the land, and also taking inspiration from certain exotic models; some years later, a little Arab-style temple was added by his son Ernesto. A celebrated botanist, Vincenzo Tineo, planted numerous species of plants. Among fountains, greenhouses, commemorative plaques, and busts of illustrious Sicilians is a group of sculptures representing Kanaris at Chios (1878), by Benedetto Civiletti. Opposite the Giardino Inglese is a parterre now named after Giovanni Falcone and Francesca Morvillo. This garden contains a monument by Vincenzo Ragusa dedicated to Giuseppe Garibaldi, with a lion by Mario Rutelli at the base. The monument was inaugurated on the occasion of the National Exhibition held in 1891-92.
Once the property of Giuseppe Lanza Branciforti, this building - originally a sort of country lodge - dates back to the eighteenth century, although it was renovated in Neoclassical style in the late nineteenth century. It now the seat of the Municipal Office of Culture, Tourism, and Sport. The monumental entrance, in Piazza Luigi Scalia in the very heart of Palermo, is flanked by two pillars surmounted by groups of sculptures and the great gate bears the family coat of arms. This park used to be tantamount to a private botanical garden, renowned throughout Europe, with orchards of citrus-fruit trees, extensive fields under cultivation, and no fewer than 2,796 different species of plants, of which today some 130 still survive, including the extremely rare Araucaria bidwilli and Phoenix canariensis, and two majestic specimens of Ficus magnolioides. Two glass and wrought-iron conservatories are still standing, in one of which 278 different species of roses and orchids used to be grown. Scattered around the park - the largest in the city area - are the basins of various fountains, including one eighteenth-century exemplar, possibly by Ignazio Marabitti, that consists of a group of sculptures representing Glaucus with some putti; there are also numerous marble benches and a four-arched tufa-stone bridge.
Villa Garibaldi, laid out in 1861-64 by the architect Giovan Battista Filippo Basile, who also designed the elegant iron railings cast in the Oretea Foundry, takes up most of the square. It is located in a fascinating part of Palermo, near the end of the Cassaro (as Corso Vittorio Emanuele used to be called) and the sea, amid some of the city’s most interesting historic buildings, including the fourteenth-century Palazzo Chiaramonte (now the seat of Palermo University), Palazzo Galletti, Palazzo Villarosa, the Chiesa di Santa Maria dei Miracoli, and Palazzo Fatta. Villa Garibaldi contains numerous specimens of exotic plants, including a splendid Ficus magnolioides, one of the largest in Italy. Inside the garden, along the paths, are busts of protagonists of the Italian Risorgimento, fountains, and chalets. There is also a municipal play centre, with a children’s library.
Stretching out beyond the Marina promenade, this public garden is located facing the sea on the Piano di Sant’Erasmo. It was created in 1778 and is named after Giulia Ginevra, wife of the Viceroy, Marcantonio Colonna. The layout of the Garden was designed by the architect Nicolò Palma, who adopted a rigorously geometrical pattern in which the intersecting perpendicular and diagonal pathways create a fascinating series of green patchwork. From the Neoclassical monumental entrance, by the Foro Italico, the visitor reaches the centre of the garden, which is dominated by the Dodecahedron, a marble fountain with twelve sundials designed by Ignazio Marabitti (1780); in each of the four corners, Giuseppe Damiani Almeyda built a Pompeian-style exedra (1866); while on the west side, there is a fountain representing the Genius of Palermo, designed by Marabitti (1778), surrounded by a group of allegorical statues dating from the same period. In the nineteenth century the luxuriant vegetation was removed and a romantic hillock was created, with the addition of pseudo-Roman ruins, a Neoclassical belvedere, and the busts of illustrious Sicilians.
The Botanical Garden was laid out in 1789, along the western edge of Villa Giulia. It is regarded as one of the most important botanical gardens in all Europe on account of the beauty, rarity, and rich variety of the botanical species it possesses, which come from sources near and far. It is a fundamental institution of the University of Palermo, with didactic and scientific functions, and covers an area of some 10 hectares (250 acres). The gymnasium, the central building looking out towards Via Lincoln, was designed in 1789 by the architect Léon Dufourny, who took his inspiration from ancient Greek architecture. The building is flanked by two sphinxes and topped by statues of the four seasons; the frescoes decorating the interior are by Giuseppe Velasco (1795). The buildings to the side, the calidarium and the tepidarium, were constructed in 1790-97 under the supervision of Giuseppe Venanzio Marvuglia. At the end of the central pathway there is an aquarium containing a number of aquatic plants. Plants that require protection are kept in the Carolina Conservatory, a gift from Queen Maria Carolina - originally a wooden structure, it was rebuilt in cast iron by Carlo Giachery in 1856. The Garden is further graced by the Fountain of Paris, by Nunzio Morello (1838), and two statues dedicated to Discorides and Theophrastus, by Domenico Danè.
Villa
d’Orléans Villa d’Orléans stands on the site of an older eighteenth-century suburban construction located on agricultural property belonging to Prince Giuseppe Reggio. In the nineteenth century it was redesigned by Antonio Buscanio as a residential villa for Enrico d’Aumale, son of Louis Philip d’Orléans and Marie Amélie, who had inherited the estate from his father, the Bourbon Ferdinand IV. Today the Villa is the official residence of the President of the Sicilian Region. The splendid and picturesque Italian-style garden possesses a wide range of plants and flowers, fine lawns, and lofty trees, plus a menagerie with pools, cages, and aviaries that children find great fun. The garden is part of the vast park belonging to the old estate, where now - since the post-war years - the new campus of Palermo University has begun to spread, in the area formed by the bed of the River Kemonia (known as the Garofala hollow).
Villa
Whitaker a Malfitano This building, surrounded by thick vegetation, was built between 1885 and 1889 by Giuseppe Whitaker. The Whitakers were a family of wealthy English entrepreneurs who moved to Sicily in the second half of the nineteenth century. A residence on three levels and in Renaissance style, it contains magnificent furnishings (exactly as they were when the Whitakers lived here) and a precious collection of works of art: paintings, tapestries, furniture, china, and books. Much of the furniture is in oriental style. Notable in the interior décor is the Summer Room, frescoed by Ettore De Maria Bergler, representing a gazebo full of vegetation. The extensive garden, laid out by Emilio Kunzmann, possesses a rich variety of rare botanical species, including a Ficus magnolioides just outside the building and some exotic plants from Tunisia and Sumatra. Today the bulding is the seat of the Whitaker Foundation and is open to the public.
Villa
Castelnuovo Surrounded by a large park, this Villa dates back to the second half of the eighteenth century, when it was built by Gaetano Cottone e Morso, Prince of Castelnuovo. In 1819 his son Carlo established here a School of Agricultural Sciences, an institution whose purpose was to teach rational farming methods (today it is owned by the University of Palermo) and which drastically altered the park’s original layout. Following the example of the Botanical Garden, a Neoclassical-style gymnasium was built by the architect Antonio Gentile, a structure crossed from side to side by a colonnade of eight Doric columns with a dome in the middle, the interior of which was decorated by Michele Varrica. A drive lined with cypress trees marks the other entrance from Via San Lorenzo, flanked by allegorical statues of Agriculture and Abundance. Other paths lined with various exotic species lead to the magnificent Teatro di Verdura, managed by the Teatro Massimo, which organizes a summer season of cultural events. Deep in the luxuriant but well-tended vegetation surrounding the Theatre is the Fountain of Music, by Ignazio Marabitti (1777).
Villa
Igiea The masterpiece of Palermo modernist architecture, this Grand Hotel facing the sea was built in 1900 by the architect Ernesto Basile for the Florio family of entrepreneurs, who initially wanted the building to be a sanatorium. A pre-existing construction, the neo-Gothic Villa Domville, was incorporated by Basile into the new building. The style is deliberately asymmetrical, with numerous little towers, porticoes, and refined decorative details (majolica, wrought iron, and stone intaglios). Noteworthy among the elegant rooms designed by Basile is the famous dining-room, which still presents its original wooden furniture from the Ducrot factory, plus the extraordinary wall decorations by Ernesto De Maria Bergler, who drew his inspiration from the motifs of art nouveau and modernism. On the terraces in the elegant garden sloping gently down to the sea are the mock ruins of a little classical temple that once stood here.
Villa
Lampedusa This Villa was built in the mid-eighteenth century in a park extending over 10,000 square metres, with fountains and a cafehaus, and decorated internally with frescoes of the Gaspare Fumagalli school. Redesigned in classical style, it was purchased in 1845 by Giulio Tomasi, Prince of Lampedusa, who added a little tower to the central structure of the building in order to use it as an observatory and thus satisfy his passion for astronomy. On the piano nobile there are three rooms in rococo and Pompeian style. Despite its slightly ruinous condition, the Villa still has great charm, imbued as it is with the atmosphere described in the celebrated novel The Leopard, by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (the grandson of the prince who loved astronomy), whose name still lives in the name of Villa Salina. Today it is run by a private association, which uses it as a venue for open-air shows and concerts. |
