Boboli Gardens

Today we visited the Boboli Gardens which are the "yard" of the Pitti Palace. The Pitti Palace originally was built in 1458 and belonged to a Florentine banker named Luca Pitta. It was acquired by the Medici family in 1549 and became their chief residence. I say "acquired" because  wikipedia says they bought it, but several sources I read around Florence said the Medici's "took" it. I am not an expert in Florentine history, so can't tell you the whole story.

I wanted to visit the Boboli Gardens and the Royal apartments. I had read online that you could get a combo ticket for both. This is not true. The guy at the ticket desk said it was two different tickets. I opted for the gardens ticket as this was my main reason for the visit. With your entrance to the gardens is also included a visit to the costume museum and other places on the grounds (but not the apartments!).

When you enter, they scan you and check your bags, and then you enter a courtyard. They looked like they were setting up for some sort of outdoor concert. Then you go through another entrance into the gardens.

The gardens aren't what you might expect of a regular garden, the real beauty are the sculptures that are placed throughout the gardens. The gardens cover 111 acres, so are quite extensive! Certainly bigger than I expected to find in the middle of a large city.

When you first enter you see a main area that was originally intended as an amphitheatre, and held plays as early as the late 1400's.

As you looked past the amphitheatre area, you could see the garden stretching way back and UP. There was a LOT of walking up on this day!

We had been walking quite a bit in the hot sun at this point, so decided to see the costume museum (air conditioned 😀 ) before touring around the enormous gardens. I was hoping to see some Medici garments, but instead it was a museum showcasing important fashion items from the last two centuries. It was still very interesting... and air conditioned!

The real thrill of this museum for me was the rooms. They were part of the original palace and were absolutely gorgeous. I loved looking up at the ceilings, the fabric coloured walls, and the beautiful lights!

There were also beautiful paintings throughout the Costume Museum.

When we headed back outside we just wandered aimlessly. I'm sure we missed important things, but we didn't really know where to go. Later I saw some people with a map, but I'm not sure where they got it from!

One of the highlights for me were the Cypress Arches. I had seen photos of it, and it was my main reason for wanting to visit the gardens.

We also liked the view from this point, which was not all the way to the top, but still had a fantastic view back to the Pitti Palace.

There were all kinds of statues in the gardens, but this one was the most unique.

Another highlight was the Fountain of Neptune. It was a highlight because it was beautiful... but also because it had some cute little ducklings swimming around. Jessica was quite thrilled about that!

Here she is cooing over the ducklings 😀🦆

We also went into a beautiful building. We couldn't really figure out the name of it, but the map led me to believe it was called "Kaffeehaus". I'm not sure why it is called this, but it is one of my favourite rooms ever! It is painted so that you feel like you are in a gazebo in a beautiful garden. Jessica and I have decided that it will be our reading room 😀

This is the ceiling!

... and these are the walls.

The view is pretty good too!

I'm just going to include a few more of the gardens, because they were quite beautiful! Don't go there expecting flowers though... it isn't that kind of garden!

As we were leaving we saw this lady working on a small pathway. Steve went over to watch, and asked her what she was doing. She was painstakingly cleaning each individual rock (with a syringe) in the path, and then replacing it. This looks like it would be a very time consuming and delicate job!

After this we stopped in a little cafe across the street for a cold drink and a snack, and then headed home for the day. A thunderstorm was brewing, and we almost made it all the way home before the downpour started... almost... 😀