The wonders of Pratolino

Abstract

Abstract The ‘wonders’ (meraviglie) of the 16th-century gardens of the Medici villa at Pratolino, about six miles north of Florence off the road to Bologna, amazed foreign travellers, and particularly the English, from the first detailed account by the Frenchman Montaigne in 1580 through the mid 18th century, but now all that remains are the colossal figure of the Apennines hunched lonely over a small lake, the stalactite-lined Grotto of Cupid, and a small octagonal chapel with a few other ruined vestiges set in a broad English landscape park. It is one of the incongruities of fate that an English park should supplant the Italian gardens, for Pratolino played at least a minor role in the formulation of the 18th-century English garden.