268 
THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 
Republic, by which he helped to defend the city during an eleven months’ siege. The 
great brown walls, with one remaining tower, look almost impregnable, and present a curious 
contrast to the frivolous little garden planted on them a hundred years later. Here we look 
over the ridge in the opposite direction to all the rest of the grounds, and very lovely the view 
is, the Apennines from this point taking an exquisite intense blue, like lapis-lazuli, while groups 
of dark cypresses stand out against the silver foam of the olive gardens. 
At the entrance to the garden is a belvedere, from which we overlook the town. There 
are few open spaces in these gardens ; the whole consists of a sort of bocage of ilexes, overarching 
in dense shade, in whose gloom their rich black trunks and branches look almost uncanny. 
Elsewhere the ilexes are clipped into long green walls in which niches are cut for seats and 
marble statues. 
A very imposing avenue of tall cypresses leads away from the dower garden to the south- 
west down a steep hill ; outside it, on either hand, runs a pleached alley of ilexes ; and 
half way down, where it is 
broken by groups of statuary, 
another very wide alley branches 
off to right and left, each ending 
at a fountain. The effect of 
this avenue, with its dark senti- 
nels against the blue sky and 
the glimmering forms of god 
and goddess, is very grand, 
and must have been much more 
harmonious before the broad 
pathway was vulgarised by 
gravel. Formerly, of course, 
it had only a dark, moss-grown 
road, set across, every yard 
or so, by a low, transverse bar 
of grooved grey stone, like one 
or two which still remain. 
The path sweeps down, 
and we come to another en- 
closure, a break as striking as, 
and quite different from, any 
we have yet seen, illustrating 
the clever way in which the 
garden artists of the Renais- 
sance understood how to space 
out their ground and how to 
280.— PLAN OF THE ISOLOTTO IN THE BOBOLI GARDENS, PITTI Rad up tO surprises. The 
PALACE, AT FLORENCE. avenuc (Figs. 278 and 279) of 
J-'roin "Edifices Toscane.” i i ■ . ^ i 
approach being so stately 
some adequate goal was felt to be necessary. This is afforded by a giardino del lago, 
a miniature lake set in close-cut walls like all the rest, enclosing a fantastically shaped 
island, an isolotto, in the centre, which is reached by bridges and boats (Figs. 280 to 2S2). It is 
all balustraded about and set with pots of lemon trees, and over the whole towers Giorgio 
Vasari’s and Gian Bologna’s fountain, a great shallow basin, upon which stands a figure of 
Oceanus (Fig. 2S3). A stone pathway with seats at intervals encircles the toy lake. Publicity has 
well nigh obliterated the charm of the Court garden, but a little of it may still be recalled. 
The little meadow beyond was once called rUcellaja, and snares used to be set here for 
catching small birds. 
Ghosts are not common in Italy, but this old pleasure ground is credited with one. Boboli 
was the name of the owner who cultivated the land and sold it to the Medici, .kfter he had 
