Italy’s Most Romantic Gardens

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Italy’s gardens were built for slow walks: gravel paths between box hedges, fountains fed by gravity, terraces that open onto a lake or a city skyline. Here are nine of the most romantic, from Rome to Florence and the lakes, each with a link to its official page so you can check opening days and tickets before you go.

1. Botanical Garden of Rome

Plan your visit: Botanical Garden of Rome on Turismo Roma (official)

Between Via della Lungara and the Gianicolo hill in Trastevere, the Botanical Garden of Rome covers 12 hectares of the park of Villa Corsini, once the home of Queen Christina of Sweden. The garden settled here in 1883, and you can still see the Fountain of the Tritons by the 18th-century architect Ferdinando Fuga.

Walk among centuries-old eastern plane trees, cork oaks and Himalayan cedars, through one of Europe’s richest bamboo collections and a Mediterranean oak wood that recalls the forest that once covered the Gianicolo. The glasshouses hold about 400 orchid species, and the Japanese Garden, with its cherry trees and small waterfalls, hosts a Hanami festival when the cherries flower in spring.

2. Villa Borghese Gardens

Plan your visit: Villa Borghese on Turismo Roma (official)

On the Pincian hill above Piazza del Popolo and the Spanish Steps, Villa Borghese is Rome’s great green park. Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V, had the villa and its grounds laid out from 1608 until his death in 1633, with the architects Flaminio Ponzio and Giovanni Vasanzio.

In the late 18th century the family added symmetrical avenues, neoclassical temples and Piazza di Siena, and in 1903 the Italian state bought the villa and opened it as a public park. Book ahead for the Galleria Borghese in the villa’s Casino Nobile, then walk the avenues to the Pincio terrace.

3. Villa d’Este, Tivoli

Plan your visit: Tivoli and Villa d'Este on Turismo Roma (official)

In the hill town of Tivoli, east of Rome, Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este built his villa in the mid-16th century. Its garden is a Renaissance showpiece of water: Pirro Ligorio’s engineering feeds every fountain from an underground source by gravity alone, with no pumps.

Follow the box-lined avenues past the Oval Fountain, the Dragon Fountain and the Hundred Fountains, a long wall of spouts, to the Organ Fountain, which plays music using water pressure. Villa d’Este is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and an easy day trip from Rome.

4. Boboli Gardens, Florence

Plan your visit: Boboli Gardens on the Uffizi Galleries site (official)

Behind Palazzo Pitti, the Boboli Gardens are where the Medici family set the pattern of the Italian garden that courts across Europe went on to copy. Climb the slopes past ancient and Renaissance statues, the Fountain of Neptune and the Fountain of the Ocean.

Do not miss the grotto designed by Bernardo Buontalenti, the most famous of the garden’s grottoes. From the top terraces you look back over the rooftops of Florence.

5. Bardini Garden, Florence

Plan your visit: Bardini Garden (official)

A short walk from Boboli, on the Oltrarno hillside below the old city walls, the Bardini Garden gives one of the best views of Florence from four hectares of terraces and woodland. The antique dealer Stefano Bardini called it “the three gardens”: an Italian garden with a grand Baroque staircase, an English wood laid out as an Anglo-Chinese garden, and an agricultural park with a fruit orchard.

Come in spring for the wisteria pergola, which turns into a purple tunnel, then sit on the terrace at the top of the staircase and look out over the rooftops of Florence.

6. Isola Bella, Lake Maggiore

Plan your visit: Our guide to the Borromean Islands

Off Stresa on Lake Maggiore, Isola Bella takes its name from Isabella d’Adda, wife of Carlo III Borromeo, who received the island in her dowry and in 1630 imagined its Baroque gardens. From the water the island looks like a ship: the terraced gardens and the Teatro Massimo form the prow, the palazzo and the pier the stern.

Climb the stacked terraces of the Teatro Massimo, set with statues and topped by the Borromeo unicorn, and look out across the lake.

7. Isola Madre, Lake Maggiore

Plan your visit: Isola Madre on Isole Borromee (official)

Isola Madre was once a farm of vines, figs, olives, chestnuts and cherries. Today it is a botanical garden of rare and exotic plants from around the world, laid out on terraces around the Borromeo palazzo, with a family chapel added on a lower terrace in 1858.

It is quieter than Isola Bella, so plan to walk its paths slowly and pair both islands in one day by boat from Stresa.

8. Villa Carlotta, Lake Como

Plan your visit: Villa Carlotta (official)

At Tremezzo on the western shore of Lake Como, Villa Carlotta was built at the end of the 17th century by the Clerici marquises of Milan. Its botanical garden, which the villa calls a kaleidoscope of colours in every season, surrounds the house above the lake.

Inside, the museum holds works by Canova, Hayez and Thorvaldsen.

9. Giardino di Ninfa, Lazio

Plan your visit: Giardino di Ninfa (official, opening dates and booking)

South of Rome near Cisterna di Latina, the Garden of Ninfa grows among the ruins of a medieval town, with roses climbing broken walls and a clear river running through it. The Caetani family created it in the 20th century as a romantic, English-style garden.

Ninfa opens only on set dates with a booked visit, so check the calendar on the official site before you plan around it. Read our story of Ninfa for the history.

Planning a Garden Trip

A week connects three regions. Start in Rome with the Botanical Garden and Villa Borghese, take the train to Tivoli for Villa d’Este, then go on to Florence for Boboli and Bardini. Finish on the lakes: Lake Maggiore for Isola Bella and Isola Madre, Lake Como for Villa Carlotta. Ninfa fits as a day out from Rome on one of its open days.

Opening days, hours and tickets change through the year, so check each garden’s official page (linked in its section above) before you travel, and book ahead for Ninfa and the Galleria Borghese.

Related: The Best Day Trips from Rome

Related: Best Things to Do in Lake Como

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