Boboli Gardens with Reserved Entry and Audio Guide

Highlights

• Reserved entry
• Grotta del Buontalenti
• Bardini Gardens included

What's included

Itinerary

1. 1

   Giardino di Boboli

   The Boboli Gardens rise on the hillside behind Palazzo Pitti in Florence, begun in 1549 for Eleonora di Toledo, wife of Cosimo I de' Medici. Designed by Niccolò Pericoli, known as il Tribolo, and later expanded by Bartolomeo Ammannati and Bernardo Buontalenti, they became the model for the Italian Renaissance garden, blending geometric hedges, statuary, and grand vistas into a vast open-air museum. Among its highlights is the Grotta del Buontalenti, an eccentric Mannerist grotto built between 1583 and 1593, its walls dripping with artificial stalactites and once home to Michelangelo's unfinished Prigioni. Elsewhere, the amphitheater, the Neptune Fountain, and the Isolotto's island garden unfold along sweeping sightlines, while sculptures spanning Roman antiquity to the 20th century line the paths. Opened to the public in 1766, the gardens remain one of the finest examples of Italian landscape design and, together with Florence's historic center, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Before you go

Location

Piazza Dei Pitti 1, 50125, Italy