Villa Bardini Gardens, Florence: Where the Terraces Ascend into the Light

Above the southern bank of the Arno, where the streets of Oltrarno begin their ascent towards Florence’s old walls, the Villa Bardini Gardens rise through a hillside of terraces, woodland, fountains and weathered stone.

Known in Italian as Giardino Bardini, the gardens reveal themselves slowly.

Florence is always somewhere beyond the leaves, yet for much of the climb the city appears only in fragments: terracotta rooftops, a distant tower, the pale face of a church, the unmistakable curve of Brunelleschi’s dome suspended above the trees. Each turn of the path seems to conceal one view and offer another.

I visited the Bardini Gardens in the height of summer, when Florence lay beneath the intense Tuscan sun and the stone streets below seemed to hold the heat. By then, the famous wisteria had long finished flowering. The cascades of violet and lilac were gone, replaced by a dense green canopy.

Yet I never felt that I had arrived in the wrong season.

Beneath pergolas and mature trees, the light softened, and the heat gradually loosened its grip. Paths disappeared into woodland; fountains and grottoes emerged from shadow; and fragments of sculpture appeared among leaves and old walls. Above the brightness and movement of Florence, the gardens offered something quieter: shade, water, green silence, and a sense of retreat.

Seven Centuries Above Florence

The story of the Bardini Gardens began long before the man whose name they now carry.

Documents from 1259 record an hortus conclusus, an enclosed garden belonging to the Mozzi family beside their palace near the Arno, with cultivated land extending towards the hillside above. For centuries, vines, orchards and terraces occupied these slopes, traces of an older Florence in which gardens were as productive as they were beautiful.

That agricultural memory has never entirely disappeared. It survives in the olives, fruit trees, and cultivated terraces that remain part of the landscape today.

During the seventeenth century, the western part of the property passed into the hands of Francesco Manadori. In 1641, he commissioned the Florentine architect Gherardo Silvani to build a villa upon an earlier medieval structure.

Originally known as Villa Manadora, its commanding position soon earned it another name, Villa Belvedere.

Today, Villa Bardini remains surprisingly restrained. Its pale facade seems almost to defer to the landscape around it, quietly crowning the hillside while Florence spreads below towards the Arno and the distant Tuscan hills.

Around the villa, however, the gardens became increasingly theatrical.

Stone, Water and the Gods

The monumental staircase rising through the centre of the Villa Bardini Gardens has seventeenth-century origins, but during the later eighteenth century Giulio Mozzi enriched the landscape with fountains, sculpture and mosaic ornament.

Stone steps climb between terraces planted today with roses and irises. Statues punctuate the ascent, while the great fountain wall combines water and architecture against the slope.

Water once served the productive garden as much as the ornamental one, irrigating the hillside while bringing movement, sound, and coolness to the stone terraces. On a hot summer day, that older relationship between garden and water feels especially vivid.

Near the lower terrace garden, statues of Vertumnus and Pomona guard another flight of steps. These ancient deities, associated with gardens, orchards, ripening fruit and the changing seasons, seem entirely at home on a hillside cultivated for centuries.

At the foot of the terrace, two terracotta dogs echo the celebrated Molossian hounds of the Boboli Gardens, bringing an unexpected note of playfulness to the formal setting.

The Bardini Gardens continually shift in this way between grandeur and intimacy.

Sculpture is scattered throughout the grounds, often appearing without ceremony. A face emerges from a fountain. An urn rests against an old wall. Classical figures occupy terraces and niches, their surfaces softened by weather, moss and time.

Among the most significant is the sixteenth-century Fountain of Venus, standing on the lawn before Villa Bardini. The classical figure predates Stefano Bardini’s ownership of the estate and belongs to an older artistic life of the gardens, when mythology, water, and cultivated landscape were already entwined.

Another remarkable survival is the Roman marble Leda and the Swan, carved in white Carrara marble. Once mistaken for another representation of Venus, its subject is revealed by the swan beside Leda, recalling the ancient myth of Zeus approaching the mortal queen in disguise.

Ancient marble, eighteenth-century sculpture, and later architectural fragments now inhabit the same hillside. Their histories are different, yet they have settled naturally beside one another, weathering together among stone, foliage and the changing seasons.

Bardini’s Garden

In 1913, the estate passed into the hands of Stefano Bardini, one of the great Florentine antiquarians and art dealers of his generation.

Bardini brought a collector’s eye to the hillside. Statues, urns, fountains, benches, and architectural fragments found new places among the terraces and paths, while existing structures were altered and new perspectives opened.

He was not attempting to recreate a garden belonging to a single historical period. Instead, art, architecture, and landscape from different ages were allowed to meet.

A fragment of weathered stone beside a cypress could acquire a new presence. A fountain might complete the line of a terrace. Sculpture glimpsed through leaves became part of the landscape surrounding it.

Near the summit of the great staircase, the Loggia del Belvedere forms an elegant culmination to the formal gardens. Adjoining it are the Kaffeehaus and grotto, elements associated with the nineteenth-century landscape created under Luigi Le Blanc.

The circular Kaffeehaus introduced a more intimate idea of the garden: a place not merely to admire, but to pause, converse and look outward across the city.

From the Belvedere, Florence suddenly opens below.

Santa Maria del Fiore rises above the close weave of terracotta roofs, with Giotto’s Campanile beside it and Palazzo Vecchio standing further across the city.

Seen through the haze of summer, Florence seemed softened by distance. The crowds and noise disappeared, leaving only the larger shape of the city beneath the surrounding hills.

Into the Romantic Wood

Away from the central staircase, the Bardini Gardens change mood.

The straight lines loosen, paths turn beneath trees, and the brightness of the formal terraces gives way to shadow.

In the early nineteenth century, Luigi Le Blanc reshaped part of the estate according to the fashion for Anglo-Chinese gardens then spreading through Europe. In contrast to the ordered perspectives of the Italian garden, this landscape preferred wandering, discovery, and surprise.

Water curved through the trees. Paths disappeared from sight. A rustic grotto, limonaia and other garden structures emerged among the vegetation.

One of its most unusual surviving features is the Dragon Canal, a long watercourse winding through the shaded landscape towards its sculptural dragon.

Nearby stand statues of Ceres and Bacchus, deities of grain, wine, fertility and abundance, continuing the garden’s recurring dialogue between mythology and cultivation.

Yet in summer, the history of this woodland becomes almost secondary to the physical pleasure of being beneath its trees.

The fierce Florentine light becomes filtered and green. Stone paths cool in the shade. Water, foliage, and shadow create the sensation of having entered another climate only a short distance from the sunlit city.

For a while, Florence disappears entirely.

The Wisteria in Summer

The wisteria pergola is one of the Villa Bardini Gardens’ most celebrated features, famous in spring when cascades of violet and lilac flowers create a flowering passage high above Florence.

I encountered it months later.

The flowers were gone, but the old vines had formed a dense canopy, their twisting branches woven through the pergola and casting welcome shade across the path.

On a day of intense Florentine heat, this quieter version of the wisteria was no less beautiful. Sunlight filtered through the leaves, while glimpses of Brunelleschi’s dome and the distant city appeared between the branches.

The flowers had disappeared, but the pergola had become something else: a cool and peaceful refuge above Florence.

A Garden Recovered

The survival of the Villa Bardini Gardens was not assured.

After Stefano Bardini’s death, the estate passed to his son Ugo. When Ugo died without heirs in 1965, the villa and gardens entered a long period of uncertainty and decline.

Vegetation overwhelmed parts of the hillside. Buildings deteriorated, while sculptures, fountains and paths gradually disappeared beneath neglect.

The eventual restoration recognised that the Bardini Gardens had never belonged to a single moment in history. Rather than returning them to one chosen period, the different landscapes accumulated over centuries were carefully recovered.

The formal Italian garden and its great staircase emerged again. The romantic woodland and Dragon Canal were restored. Orchards and olives returned to the cultivated slopes, while fountains, sculptures and architectural features were given new life.

The gardens reopened to the public in 2005, followed by the restored Villa Bardini in 2007.

What returned to Florence was not one garden, but many histories sharing the same hillside.

The Villa Above the Gardens

At the summit of the hillside stands Villa Bardini, built in 1641 by the Florentine architect Gherardo Silvani for Francesco Manadori upon an earlier medieval structure. Originally known as Villa Manadora, its elevated position overlooking Florence soon earned it another name: Villa Belvedere.

Its pale, restrained facade seems almost to defer to the landscape, quietly crowning the gardens rather than dominating them. Stefano Bardini acquired the villa and surrounding estate in 1913, and after decades of decline, the building was restored and reopened in 2007 as a cultural and exhibition space.

From here, garden and city finally seem to meet, with Florence unfolding below in domes, towers and terracotta roofs.

Above Florence

By the time I reached the upper terraces, the Bardini Gardens had changed the way I was seeing Florence.

From the streets below, the city can feel immediate and overwhelming, crowded with movement, voices, stone facades and monuments demanding attention. From the gardens, that intensity gradually falls away.

The landmarks remain, but they become part of something larger.

The dome becomes part of the skyline. Rooftops flow towards the Arno. The hills rise beyond the city, and Florence seems to belong once again to Tuscany.

I had come too late for the famous wisteria flowers, but perhaps that allowed another side of the Villa Bardini Gardens to reveal itself: quieter and greener, filled with old stone, classical gods, woodland shade and the memory of those who had shaped the hillside before me.

From the upper garden, Florence stretched away beneath the pale haze of the summer afternoon, its domes and towers softened by distance.

For a while, it was enough simply to remain there, above the heat and movement of the city, in the Bardini Gardens, looking across the Arno towards a Florence softened by distance, leaves and summer light.

View a selection of Villa Bardini Gardens images

All images and text © Steven Sklifas