SICILIAN GARDENS 



PLATES 127, 128 





T the present time there are but very few old gardens remaining in Sicily, 

 and practically none that can boast an antiquity of more than a century and 

 a half. The principal ones are to be found at Palermo, and also in the 

 neighbouring suburbs, particularly at Bagheria, some eight miles outside the 

 city. At Catania, besides the public garden, which exhibits rather less than 

 the usual amount of taste one finds in such gardens in Italy, there are the 

 gardens of the Duke of Carcaci and the Marchese Sanguiliano, both laid 



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out in the landscape style. At Syracuse there are a few interesting courtyard gardens of the 

 old Spanish palaces ; the Municipio has a quaint eighteenth-century terrace, with garden-house. 



At Palermo the principal garden is at La Favorita, in the Conca d' Oro, four miles from 

 the Porta Macqueda. The casino was built by Ferdinand L during his residence in Sicily, and 

 has many interesting associations connected with the English occupation — of the coup d'etat of 

 Lord William Bentinck in 1812, and the famous ball given during Nelson's stay at Palermo, 

 when the King, dressed as Jove, crowned Nelson, dressed as Mars, and presented him with the 

 dukedom and the lands of Bronte. The villa occupies a magnificent position right under the 

 grim precipices of Monte Pellegrino. Near the palace is a handsome fountain surrounded by 

 Egyptian heads, with a Doric column supporting a cast of the Farnese Hercules, enclosed within 

 well-trimmed yews. The gardens are filled with foliage in rich profusion — olives, orange-trees, 

 walnuts, palms, cypresses, and pepper-trees. 



Castelnuovo is now a large agricultural institute ; the grounds contain little of interest, 

 except a large open-air theatre, the largest in Italy, with wings of cypress that were formerly cut 

 square. The background is a permanent stucco wall, with painted scenery. It is much to be 



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deplored that the opportunities afforded by such a climate as Sicily enjoys have hitherto been so 

 neglected in the making of beautiful gardens. Many of the cities have sites that could hardly be 

 matched in Europe, and the range of tree and plant life at the disposal of the garden-designer 

 is enormous. In the public gardens at Catania, instead of endeavouring to gain a fine effect by 

 means of shade and foliage, all has been sacrificed in an effort to lay out a parterre in multi- 

 coloured spars and lava. That there should be no old gardens in Sicily will cause us little 

 surprise, for the unsettled state of the country Avould account for this ; but that there should also 

 be no good modern gardens is only attributable to the extraordinary lack of artistic instmct 

 that seems to pervade Southern Italy. 



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( 135 ) 



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