one of it s k ind
Unique Hotels of Italy
The best gardens in Italy for your unforgettable incentive
An event in a green environment is a wonderful gift not only for your guest but for the planet. It offers to your clients at the same time a unique and exclusive location.
Parco Idrotermale Negombo - Ischia
To organize an event in a garden means to help those who spend time to maintain and preserve them. The gardens are great solution to preserve our nature, more so in the big cities where they represent the only barrier to the over growing buildings
Villa Pisani Bolognesi Scalabrin - Padova
Our gardens are the most beautiful in Italy, a country which has probably most beautiful gardens in the world. Within these gardens you can find magnificent villas, noble palaces of great historical and architectural interest.
Villa Arvedi - Verona
Today, most of our gardens are able to meet the demanding needs of event & meeting planner. The italian aristocracy has matured over the centuries its own welcoming style, where the garden has played a lead role.
N
ot just any room, not just any garden. Visit Italy Tours gives you the unique opportunity to wake up in one of the finest garden in the history of art. Your room may be in a simple bed and breakfast built in an out house overlooking a sixteenth century parterre. Your window could open out from the first floor of a noble palace looking down to a topiary garden. You could have an entire floor with connecting apartments that just walk out into a park with over 3000 roses in bloom. An experience of a life time. Visit Italy will accompany you to discover iconic landscapes, parks, gardens, private and rare plant collections, nurseries and above all let you see behind the scenes of world famous Italian Gardens. Many of the gardens in this guide are part of a National wide network called Grandi Giardini Italiani. It was founded to spread
the knowledge of the immense botanical and historical heritage of Italians gardens. Visit Italy therefor is a precious partner in so far as attracting visitors interested in living an outdoor experiwnce. Visiting rural Italy means seeing the ever changing landscapes from the smooth Tuscan hills to the steep terraced gardens in Liguria. It means seeing vineyards that look like gardens, and gardens that look like back drops far a film. Visiting gardens with us means slowing down, having time to appreciate a warm day sitting out under a tundre year old tree, staying on after closing time: it means coming as close as you can to the Italian way of life. Not just a room, not just a garden: Visit Italy Tours and Grandi Giardini Italiani has put together, just the best way to enjoy over 500 years of gardening history. Your room is waiting for you, so are the Grandi Giardini Italiani. Judith Wade
Visit Italy Tours & Grandi Giardini Italiani bring their expertise and professional skills and are at your disposal to help you arrange unforgettable events in most prestigious and exclusive locations in italy.
The best 25 locations for your event in Italian gardens 1)
La Cervara- Abbazia di San Girolamo Lungomare Rossetti – via Cervara, 10 Santa Margherita Ligure (Genova)
2) Parco di Villa Serra Via Carlo Levi, 2 Sant’olcese Genova 3) Villa D’Este Via Regina, 40 Cernobbio 4)
Villa Carlotta via Regina Tremezzo (Como)
5)
Giardino Sigurtà Via Cavour 1 Valeggio sul Mincio (Verona)
6)
Villa Arvedi Grezzana - Verona
7)
Villa Trissino Marzotto P.zza Giangiorgio Trissino, 2 Trissino (Vicenza)
8)
Il “Serraglio” di Villa Fracanzan Piovene Via S. Francesco, 2
Orgiano (Vicenza)
9)
Giardino Torrigiani Via dei Serragli, 144 Florence
10)
Villa La Massa Via della Massa, 24 Candeli (Florence)
11)
La Gamberaia Via del Rossellino, 72 Settignano (Florence)
12)
Villa Poggio Torselli Via Scopeti 10 San Casciano VP (Florence)
13)
Giardino La Foce La Foce - 61, Strada della Vittoria Chianciano Terme (Siena)
14)
Parco Storico Seghetti Panichi Via San Pancrazio, 1 Castel di Lama (Ascoli Piceno)
15)
San Liberato Via Settevene-Palo, 33 Bracciano (Rome)
16)
Le terme di Stigliano Via Bagni di Stigliano Canale Monterano (Rome)
17)
La Landriana Via Campo di Carne, 51 Tor San Lorenzo - Ardea (Rome)
18)
Villa San Michele Viale Axel Munthe, 34 Anacapri - Capri (Naples)
19)
Parco Idrotermale Negombo Via S. Montano Lacco Ameno - Ischia (Naples)
20)
Parco dei Principi Via Rota, 1 Sorrento (Naples)
21)
Renaissance Tuscany Il Ciocco Resort & Spa Via Giovanni Pascoli Castelvecchio Pascoli (LU)
22)
Planeta - La Foresteria ex S.S. 115 s.p. 79, Km 91 Menfi (Agrigento)
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La Cervara, Abbazia di San Gerolamo
Villa Serra
Villa D’Este
Villa Carlotta
Parco Giardino Sigurtà
Villa Arvedi
Lungomare Rossetti - via Cervara, 10 S. Margherita Ligure (Genova)
Via Carlo Levi, 2 Sant’olcese (Genova)
Via Regina, 40 Cernobbio
Via Regina Tremezzo - Como
Via Cavour 1 Valeggio sul Mincio (Verona)
Grezzana - Verona
The Cervara Abbey is situated on a sheer cliff between Santa Margherita and Portofino. Today it is mainly used for conferences, meetings, concerts, private parties and wedding ceremonies. The abbey was founded in 1361 by a small group of Benedictine monks and in its 7 centuries of history it has seen peaks of great splendour and lows of decline, which is reflected in the various architectural transformat i o n s of the building.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century the marquises of Serra purchased the property from the Pinelli family. After a trip to London in 1851, the marquis Orso decided to convert the farm buildings into a Tudor style house, a medieval tower and an English style park. Work was completed according to plans taken from John Claudius Lou¬don’s 1846 encyclopaedia. After a long period of abandon the park and villa were bought in 1982 by the municipal councils of Genoa, Sant’ Olcese and Serra Riccò and the Villa Serra Consortium was established to run them. luxury hotel, now one of the most famous in the world.
The villa was built in 1568 by Cardinal Tolomeo Gallio, designed by Pellegrino Tibaldi, known as il Pellegrini, and at the end of the eighteenth century was bought by Marquess Bartolomeo Calderara for his wife Vittoria Peluso. In 1815 it was taken over by Caroline of Brunswick, Princess of Wales and wife, later repudiated, of the future King George IV of England; she was the one to call the property the New Villa d’Este. In 1856 a new villa was built in the park, named La Reine d’Angleterre in honor of Carolina von Brunswick. From 1868 to 1870 the Tsarina Maria Fedorowna stayed there, fascinated by the lake landscape and the house.
Villa Carlotta lays on the western coast of the Como lake with an extension of 70.000 square meters and a wonderful view on the mountains and the villages of Bellano, Varenna, Bellagio. The Italian garden with its staircases, balustrades, fountain and the tunnel of citrus plants belongs to the Clerici period; to Sommariva’s time date the masterpieces of art - still nowadays in the house museum (work of Canova, Hayez and Thorvaldsen) and the romantic park on the hill with grotesques long paths and sudden amazing views, whilst the landscape garden was developed on a large scale by the Saxen-Meiningen, to whom it owes its wide reputation.
The park is famous for its round-table conferences with Nobel prize winners G. Domagk (sulphonamides), A. Fleming (penicillin), S.A. Waksman (streptomycin), K. Lorenz (ethology) and A. Sabin (anti-polio vaccine) and soon became a favoured destination for famous botanists as well as nature lovers in general. The Hermitage, the little Castle dedicated to the “benefactors of humanity”, the horizontal Sundial, the great lawn and 18 tropical fish ponds all contribute to its fascination. A little train links the main attractions.
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Villa Arvedi in Cuzzano, Grezzana, was registered as the property of Mastino, Alberto and Cangrande della Scala since 1200. In 1432 it was described as: ”a holding with a battlemented house, and wine and oil presses”. It is situated on the slope of a hill and surrounded above by an ancient olive grove and a wood full of oaks and hornbeams. Towards the middle of 1650 it took on its current form based on the architect’s G.B. Bianchi designs. The room on the first floor and the small church are covered in frescos painted by Ludovico Dorigny (1654-1742). There are also frescos created by Farinati, Fralezza and Santo Prunati.
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Villa Trissino Marzotto
Il “Serraglio” di Villa Fracanzan Piovene
Giardino Torrigiani
Villa La Massa
La Gamberaia
Villa Poggio Torselli
P.zza Giangiorgio Trissino, 2 Trissino (Vicenza)
Via S. Francesco, 2 Orgiano (Vicenza)
Via dei Serragli, 144 Florence
Via della Massa, 24 Candeli (Florence)
Via del Rossellino, 72 Settignano (Florence)
Via Scopeti, 10 San Casciano VP (Florence)
The higher villa has an open lawn embellished with statues and encircled by gateways and walls, above which is the “riding school”. This leads to a long avenue of cedars culminating in the Muttoni parterre. In front of the lower villa a double stairway leads to the octagonal fountain containing 1,500 m3 of water. The entrance gate is probably by Frigimelica and the many wrought iron gates show the creativity and skill of Venetian artisans in the eighteenth century.
The villa is an important work by Francesco Muttoni (1668-1747), an architect from Lugano. The original projects are in Italian archives and in Washington Congress Library. The monumental baroque structure, rare in the Veneto province, is frequently studied for its decorative elements taken from Palladian tradition. There is an imposing twelve-arched “barchessa” with rusticated pilasters beside the villa, which links the new building to the fourteenth century courtyard.
The Torrigiani garden with nearly seventeen acres hidden in the heart of Florence, is the largest privately owned garden in Europe situated within city boundaries. Renowned in the sixteenth century as a botanical garden it had a revival in the early nineteenth century when the Marquis Pietro Torrigiani inherited the property and started acquiring the surrounding land. This he transformed into a ‘romantic park’ in the english style, adhering to the fashion of the time, which covered an area of 25 acres. The architect Luigi de Cambray Digny, who had recently renovated the Oricellari
The most ancient news of the location know as “Gamberaja” goes back to the second half of ‘300 when a farm with an agricultural house was once owned by the nuns of S. Martin to Shelf. The name referred to the presence of a course of sweet water where the shrimps were fished. It is a monument rich in history, its enchantments are revealed little by little to whom who spends the time to discover them. The garden is a bright and clever game of heights and voids, in which water’s tubs delimited by the boxwood replace the parterres.
This property, immersed in vineyards and olive groves not far from San Casciano, was already recorded under this name in the land registers at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Known as “Queen of Chianti villas”, now National Monument, the villa was built in the fifteenth century by the Machiavelli family and passed through the hands of all the major Florentine families (Corsini, Antinori and Capponi) until the Orlandinis, responsible for the last transformation in 1690. The grden probably dates back to the same time. It is formed by an area of parkland to the north and an Italian style garden on two terraced levels to the south.
gardens to much acclaim was commissioned to re-design the garden.
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Immersed in the heart of Tuscany, where nature predominates, this splendid mansion is a place where refined elegance meets total relaxation from the moment you arrive. Part of the Leading Hotels of the World, Villa La Massa is the exquisite jewel of the Villa d’Este Group. The 16th Century estate sits on the banks of the Arno River, on 20 acres full of lemon trees and olive groves that surround the property. Its reflection on the Arno River renders it almost like a Renaissance painting of the most magnificent bucolic landscape.
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Giardino La Foce
Renaissance Tuscany Il Ciocco Resort & Spa
Parco Storico Seghetti Panichi
San Liberato
Grand Hotel Terme di Stigliano
La Landriana
La Foce, 61, Strada della Vittoria Chianciano Terme (Siena)
Località Il Ciocco Barga (Lucca)
Via San Pancrazio, 1 Castel di Lama (Ascoli Piceno)
Via Settevene-Palo, 33 Bracciano (Rome)
Via Bagni di Stigliano Canale Monterano (Rome)
Via Campo di Carne, 51 Tor San Lorenzo - Ardea (Rome)
Villa and garden embrace the spectacular view of the Val D’Orcia and Monte Amiata beyond. Antonio Origo was chiefly concerned with bringing prosperity and modern cultural methods to the then very poor valley, while Iris concentrated on the garden, her books and welfare end education of the farmer families. The garden grew together with the works and progress on the farm. For the Origos, the garden represented a haven from the harshness of the land, and a place to welcome their friends, to treasure the shade, the flower blossom and to shelter from the harsh temperatures of the Valley in the summer.
The Reinassance Tuscany is nestled within a 2,000 hectares estate nature strechted in a 500 meters to 1250 meters of altitude. From its highest point you are able to view the beauty of the surrouding nature: The Appennino Tosco-Emiliano, The Apuane Alps, The Serchio Valley and the Gargagnana. The Renaissance Tuscany Il Ciocco Resort & Spa has several sporting facilities for all needs.
The Borgo Storico Seghetti Panichi lies on a hill along the valley of the River Tronto, a few miles from Ascoli Piceno. The historic compound, built in different periods, includes the Relais Villa, an ancient medieval fortress, which was adapted into a country residence in the 18th century; the Residenza San Pancrazio and other buildings dating back to the 17th Century and the 19th Century, sheltered by the ancient perimeter walls of the castle. The Oratory, built in 1608, decorated with precious frescoes attributed to the Biagio Miniera school.
After ten long years of hard-working devotion and creative effort, incessantly engaged in constant interaction with nature and the world of dreams, Count Donato Sanminiatelli, his wife Maria Odescalchi and the great landscape architect Russel Page gave life to a dream to be presented to others. It was the spring of 1964 when Page first set eyes on this location of breath-taking beauty: “I don’t know of any other garden capable of emanating the magic San Liberato does” he said and accepted, in all “humility” and with great enthusiasm, the task of playing up and expanding the beauty of this small magnificent heaven.
The Grand Hotel delle Terme di Stigliano is located in one of the most suggestive frames of the Lazio Region. The structure was built in the year Seven hundred, when the thermal baths became property of the royal family Altieri, and it built above remaining’s of Roman temples. The hotel is inserted in a botanical park, an appealing spot for the quality, the kinds of plants and for the waters: nine different rising and two rivers cross the park and make it a unique place.
With their ten hectares in a large coastal area in the area of Ardea, forty kilometres south of Rome, the Landriana Gardens are truly a romantic spot reserving many a pleasant surprise. The gardens, first landscaped by Russell Page, were enlarged and altered throughout the years with the introduction of a number of plants, among which heather, hydrangeas, old roses and camellias.
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Villa San Michele
Parco Idrotermale Negombo
Parco dei Principi
Viale Axel Munthe, 34 Anacapri - Capri (Naples)
Via S. Montano Lacco Ameno - Ischia (Naples)
Via Rota, 1 Sorrento (Naples)
Between 1896 and 1910 Villa San Michele was home to its Swedish creator, the court physician and writer, Axel Munthe. Soon after the success of the book, “La Storia di San Michele” in 1929, the Villa opened to the public and has not closed its gates since. It is found to the North east of Anacapri, 327 metres above sea level, where it enjoys the most stunning views of the golf of Naples. In ancient times an imperial roman villa stood here; the ruins, conserved by Axel Munthe, are
The Duca Luigi Silvestro Camerini, humanist and traveller, arrives to Ischia in 1946 to research a location where he could create a park that could express his great passion for botany. The charm of the place and its surprising analogy with the bay of Negombo, from him admired at Ceylon, makes the choice fall on the bay of San Montano. Here the nature finds its more significant expressions in the thermal sources, proff of the volcanic history of the island of Ischia that is possible to use according to a tradition that has roots from the classic age. The present aspect of the park owns a lot to the passionate intervention of the landscape painter Ermanno Casasco.
The extraordinary stunning views of the sea from the terraces of the rooms in the Parco dei Principi, which is practically suspended between sky and sea, make this an idyllic and fairytale resort. The surroundings of our 5 star hotel in Sorrento are every bit as magical, from the elegant gardens with their tall palms and age-old trees, flowers and plants, to the sea and the private beach. The Hotel Parco dei Principi was designed and built by the architect Gio Ponti and it is a masterpiece of contemporary art. Using exclusive lines, perfect plays of colours and meticulous attention to furnishings, Gio Ponti created the first “design hotel” of the Sixties.
still visible in the garden to this day.
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Planeta - LA Foresteria ex S.S. 115 s.p. 79, Km 91 Menfi (Agrigento)
The La Foresteria resort is the most authentic expression of the Planeta family hospitality, an ambassador for Sicily and Sicilian wines and olive oils throughout the world. At La Foresteria you can find a family atmosphere, typical of an elegant and aristocratic country house, surrounded by vineyards and aromatic herbs, with an open kitchen redolent of all the scents of the Mediterranean and traditional Sicilian cooking.
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