334 
THE GARDEXS OF ITALY. 
1 he gardens of the great Villa Garzoni at Collodi, near Pescia, are a monument of baroque 
art. The villa overpowers the little antique t'illage, whose ramshackle houses climb the steep 
hill behind it, and looms from afar, a huge, grey building, decorated with flamboyant statues, and 
surrounded by mountains whose undulations are rich with olive woods and vineyards (Fig. 349). 
The garden is laid out against the hillside, and is evidently designed to impress the visitor as he 
enters with a grand coup d'leil (Figs. 351 and 352). It differs in this from the gardens of an earlier 
day, in which you are led on from one revelation to another. Confined within the tall gates and 
spreading ironwork barriers, the formal garden spreads and expands upwards, lavishly 
bedecked with plaster figures of great size and small merit. Although the garden, which is 
a work of the seventeenth century, cannot compare with those of previous ages, there is a fine 
boldness of idea in the planning of the great stairway, with its balustrades, sweeping up from the 
centre and rising one tier above another, forming two or three terraces (Figs. 353 and 334). The 
terraces themselves are very picturesque, with cypresses towering against the blue distance, and 
347.— THE THE.<tTRE, VILL.\ G.VRZONI. 
on a summer day the air is heavy with the scent of orange blossom and jasmine. Below the 
perron of the stairway is placed one of the fantastic shell grottoes so dear to the garden 
architect of the decadence. It still retains the pretty, foolish trick which must often have 
made good sport when it was new. You enter, a spring is touched, and a frieze of jets at the 
entrance keeps you a prisoner till the one who knows the secret bids it cease. We can fancy 
the conceit lending itself to many mock captures and feigned despairs in those frivolous, bygone 
summers. 
For Villa Garzoni is par excellence a garden arranged for pleasure. Situated in so isolated 
a position, far from Florence, alone in the mountains, save for what were only the few peasants’ 
houses that clustered near it, it can only have been used for a summer resort in those days of 
powder and patches, when its splendour was at its height. Somewhat of an attempt to imitate 
the gardens of Versailles, it is more rococo and less native than any other of the great villa 
