The image we have of the basic template for the gardens and villas in this region dates back to the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. These sites are a living testament to a society that allocated considerable resources to country residences.
“Historical” Friuli and the eastern part of the region followed a very different approach to the garden arts, with greater permeability to Veneto-inspired culture in the Pordenone area, greater attention to influences of transalpine origin in Central Friuli, and more “Mitteleuropean” stimuli in eastern areas, bordering on/belonging to the Empire.
Such cultural differences in the different zones became more pronounced in the early 19th century, when a landscape garden template swept through the eastern provinces – at the time, on the outskirts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire – as upper middle class families from beyond the Alps began settling in Trieste and Gorizia (which was known as the “Austrian Nice”), especially after 1850, drawn by the example of Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of Habsburg’s magnificent Miramare gardens.
More than elsewhere, gardens in the frontier region of Friuli suffered damage during the wars: many of them were lost; others were subsequently restored.
