Italian villas and their gardens . n ofthe old gardens and the introduction of alien vegetationin those which have been partly preserved. It is, forinstance, typical of the old Tuscan villa that the farm,ox podere, should come up to the edge of the terrace onwhich the house stands; but in most cases where oldvillas have been bought by foreigners, the vineyardsand olive-orchards near the house have been turnedinto lawns dotted with plantations of exotic these circumstances it is not surprising that butfew unaltered gardens are to be found near learn what the old Tuscan g
Italian villas and their gardens . n ofthe old gardens and the introduction of alien vegetationin those which have been partly preserved. It is, forinstance, typical of the old Tuscan villa that the farm,ox podere, should come up to the edge of the terrace onwhich the house stands; but in most cases where oldvillas have been bought by foreigners, the vineyardsand olive-orchards near the house have been turnedinto lawns dotted with plantations of exotic these circumstances it is not surprising that butfew unaltered gardens are to be found near learn what the old Tuscan garden was, one mustsearch the environs of the smaller towns, and there aremore interesting examples about Siena than in the wholecircuit of the Florentine hills. The old Italian architects distinguished two classesof country houses: the villa subitrbaiia, or niaisoii depiaisance (literally the pleasure-house), standing withinor just without the city walls, surrounded by pleasure-grounds and built for a few weeks residence; and the. FLORENTINE VILLAS country house, which is an expansion of the old farm,and stands generally farther out of town, among itsfields and vineyards—the seat of the country gentlemanliving on his estates. The Italian pleasure-garden didnot reach its full development till the middle of the six-teenth century, and doubtless many of the old Floren-tine villas, the semi-castle and the quasi-farm of thefourteenth century, stood as they do now, on a bareterrace among the vines, with a small walled enclosurefor the cultivation of herbs and vegetables. But of theperiod in which the garden began to be a studied archi-tectural extension of the house, few examples are to befound near Florence. The most important, if not the most pleasing, ofTuscan pleasure-gardens lies, however, within the citywalls. This is the Boboli garden, laid out on the steephillside behind the Pitti Palace. The plan of the BoboHgarden is not only magnificent in itself, but interestingas one
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