Popes and cardinals, kings and aristocrats have dotted Italy with palaces and prestigious residences, where the garden becomes a symbolic expression of power. The dynastic intertwining contributed to the transmission of ideas and knowledge. If the Medici residences of the fifteenth century offered ideas to the sixteenth-century gardens of the popes, Roman and French models assert themselves in the Savoy “Crown of delights”: following the example of the France of the Sun King, a geometric structure ordered on long avenues is imposed on the Turin plain access straights to residences and hunting reserves. Even the Farnese gardens of Colorno are a “little Versailles”.
Marriage ties between the Farnese and Bourbons will then be the origin of a close bond with Naples, where Charles III’s passion for gardens will produce the royal palaces of Capodimonte, Portici and Caserta. Family ties are also established between the Lorraine, grand dukes of Tuscany, and the Habsburgs and a sovereign, Maria Teresa, commissioned the Royal Villa of Monza from the architect Giuseppe Piermarini according to the rules of the landscape garden. The Miramare park in Trieste is due to a Habsburg-Lorraine, Maximilian, archduke of Austria and emperor of Mexico. Late are the Napoleonic examples: from Stra to the royal gardens of Venice, up to Elisa Baciocchi sister of Napoleon who binds her name to the villa of Marlia. To these, we could add the gardens which, with the unification of Italy, are confiscated by the system of royal residences; like Boboli who had already become royal in the Lorraine context.
