The Villa Borghese garden park is the most beautiful, breathtaking city park I've ever seen. When in Rome, we usually stay on the Via Veneto at the gorgeous Grande Albergo Flora. It's next to a 3000 year old wall which leads to the park. We take a leisurely stroll through the park every morning, passing by cyclists and flaneurs, children and fruit sellers. There's a bird aviary, 18th centurary statuary, fountains, winding garden lanes and wide boulevards, with the scent of lemon and orange and cypress trees. There's a pond and lazy Sunday park benches and fields where Roman's lunch and steal kisses. The Borghese homes (now museums, boutique hotels and lavish restaurants and quiet cafes) are all high renaissance architecture, housing some of the greatest of the world's art treasures; Bernini, Bellini, Caravaggio, Titian, Raphael, Rubens, Canova, among countless beautiful objects and amazing paintings and sculptures. The original gardens were the famed ancient Gardens of Lucullus and later "became the favorite playground of Claudius' Empress Messalina (after she forced the current owner, Valerius Asiaticus, to commit suicide - Tac. Annals XI.1), and was the site of her murder on the orders of the Emperor Claudius, her husband. In the 16th century they were owned by Felice della Rovere, daughter of Pope Julius II. In 1605, Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V and patron of Bernini, began turning this former vineyard into the most extensive gardens built in Rome since Antiquity." (Wikipedia)
One of the spot's I love most is the secret garden with the orange and lemon trees, next to the incredible Galleria Borghese. One looks through an iron fence to the 17th century splendor of the greenery. After enjoying the park, the gardens and perusing the art, we then walk to the Piazza d'Espagna (the Spanish Steps) and drink tea and eat scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam in the most British of all afternoon tearooms, the sumptuous, very 19th century, Babington Tea room. If we're feeling really ambitious we pop a couple doors over to the Keats and Shelley house, recite a little poetry, watch the passersby, and walk further into the city.
"The Secret Garden, is a charming characteristic park which can be found in italian parks and gardens of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, when there was a revival of interest in all things ancient. These lovely enclosed spaces, often near their owners' homes, were reserved for the invited and the privileged. Such places have a lovely atmosphere of seclusion, secrecy and tranquility, adding new dimensions of beauty to their surroundings.
The Villa Borghese had two "secret spaces": one, shrouded by trees, is the garden of bitter oranges (Giardino dei melangoli) and has a lovely eagle fountain in front of its adjacent mansion; the second "The Flower Garden", is the beautifully laid out formal garden. A third secret garden stretches in front of the Aviary, accompanied by the Meridiana (Sun dial) mansion, designed by Rainaldi."
Additional research and reading: http://www.italyguides.it/us/roma/rome/villa-borghese-gardens/villa-borghese.htm
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