Lazio and Campania are places of the most exquisite natural beauty. The climate is benevolent, often mild enough for lemons and oranges and olives to flourish, and the soil is richly fertile. It is no wonder, then, that gardens have been made here since before the time of the Romans. Traces of more than 400 gardens have been discovered in the ruins of the villas at Pompeii. In the hills around Rome, on the islands of the Bay of Naples, clinging to the cliffs above the Amalfi Coast, there still exist gardens allowing a glimpse into the shadows of time, gardens lovely, atmospheric and often filled with exotic plants. You will visit gardens of historical importance, as well as 20th century gardens of great charm. And you will have free time in which to savor the food, the wine and la dolce vita.
The tour will begin in Sorrento, Italy, and end in Rome, Italy. Flights into either Rome or Naples are suggested, with transfer to Sorrento via train. Naples is much closer, 45 to 60 minutes by Circumvesuviana train. However, Sorrento is also easily reached from Rome; the high-speed train from Rome to Naples takes approximately 90 minutes. Participants will be responsible for their own airfare and transfer arrangements to Sorrento. Group transfer by coach to Rome's Fiumicino Airport after breakfast on the final morning of the tour is included.
Saturday
2nd May or earlier
Arrive Naples and travel independently to your tour hotel in Sorrento. Group dinner tonight.
Sunday
3rd May
Following breakfast we will travel by boat to the beautiful island of Capri. With more than 800 species of plants endemic to the island, as well as a rare blue lizard, it is truly a Garden of Eden. It is here that Axel Munthe built his beloved Villa San Michel. Axel Munthe was born in Sweden in 1857 but spent much of his adult life working as a physician in southern Italy. As a young man he volunteered tirelessly during typhoid and cholera epidemics and earthquake disasters. High up on the rocky ledges of Anacapri, at the foot of Monte Barbarossa, he built a white villa surrounded by a garden in which art, architecture and nature combine in beautiful harmony.
Our second visit will be to the Giardini di Augusto, public gardens that feature a wealth of exotic plants and panoramic views of the south side of the island. Lunch on Capri is included today. Return to Sorrento late afternoon.
Stay the night in SORRENTO. Dinner on your own.
Monday
4th May
After breakfast we travel along the Amalfi Coast to the medieval town of Ravello. A rambling walk through the narrow lanes of Ravello leads to Villa Cimbrone. In 1904, Ernest Beckett, Lord Grimthorpe, bought the property and spent the next fifteen years transforming a farmhouse, vineyard and walnut grove into one of the most exquisitely beautiful places in Italy, situated on a clifftop promontory. Trees, flowers and plants grow in profusion here. The garden is an imaginative and eccentric mix of features and styles, including a lawn decorated with statues, a sunken teahouse garden, a rose garden, an olive grove carpeted with wildflowers, and natural areas which descend down the steep slopes to the valleys far below.
Villa Rufolo, perched high above the sea in the center of Ravello, is a half-ruined but still remarkable 13th-century palace, one of the oldest surviving in Italy, with a garden that inspired the setting for the enchanted gardens of Klingsor in Wagner's opera, Parsifal. The gardens are laid out on three terraces behind the villa buildings. On the upper terrace umbrella pines and cypresses shade a wellhead while on a lower level there is an elaborate embroidery of flower-filled parterres. There is also a courtyard with two beautiful loggias in Moorish style. The pleasure garden is one of the rare surviving examples of a non-ecclesiastical medieval garden. There are panoramic views of the Gulf of Salerno and the surrounding mountains and countryside from the terraces. Return to Sorrento in the late afternoon.
Stay the night in SORRENTO. Dinner on your own.
Tuesday
5th May
Today we depart after breakfast and travel by boat to the island of Ischia, where we will visit the gardens of La Mortella. In 1948, English composer William Walton married the beautiful Argentine Susana Gil. He was 46 and she 22. Almost immediately they set off to live on Ischia, an island in the Bay of Naples. In 1956 they bought land on the west-facing slope of Monte Zaro, most of it a stone quarry filled with huge and dramatic rocks. The gardens were designed by Russell Page and planted by Lady Walton with hundreds of rare and exotic species from around the world, as well as collections of citrus trees, palms, cycads and strelitzias. A luxuriant grove of tall tree ferns provides shade and shelter for delicate understory plants. Epiphytic plants and ferns grow on the trunks of trees and orchids and tillandsias flourish in the tops. There will be free time to explore more of the island on your own. Return to Sorrento in the late afternoon.
Stay the night in SORRENTO. Dinner on your own.
Wednesday
6th May
Morning guided visit to Pompeii. Mount Vesuvius looms over the whole of the Bay of Naples, but nowhere more hauntingly so than at Pompeii. In 79 AD, without warning, it erupted, blew its top, and became a raging inferno, showering rocks, fire and ash in all directions. In a few days the city of Pompeii, along with many of its citizens, was buried in layers of ash and pumice. Many of the inhabitants escaped, but the sulphurous fumes asphyxiated others. Pompeii was rediscovered in the 16th century, but excavations weren't begun until about 1750.
There will be free time after the guided visit for lunch independently, as well more time in Pompeii site and a visit to the House of Mysteries. In the afternoon, we drive north into Lazio.
Stay the night in CIVITA CASTELLANA. Dinner on your own.
Thursday
7th May
Morning visit to Sacro Bosco at Bomarzo. Myth, magic and mystery shroud this remarkable 16th-century park. The giant ogres, beasts and maidens who inhabit the wooded ravine below the Villa Orsini were carved from bedrock and from the enormous boulders strewn by glacial action across the rugged terrain of this small valley in North Lazio. Narrow paths meander through the wood, following the contours of the land, leading the visitor along a labyrinthine trail from one fantastic creature to the next. Created between 1552 and 1584 by Count Vicino Orsini, the Mannerist style of Sacro Bosco represented a willful and rebellious departure from Renaissance garden making. After the death of Count Orsini, the garden fell into centuries of neglect and nature gradually reclaimed it for herself. Local inhabitants regarded it as a damned and haunted place and were happy to have it disappear from their consciousness. In 1949, surrealist painter Salvadore Dali discovered Sacro Bosco and made a film about it. In 1980, a local bishop performed an exorcism to banish the demons.
Afternoon visit to Villa Lante. Beginning in 1568, Cardinal Giovanni Francesco Gambara created the perfectly picturesque garden of Villa Lante in the hills of Lazio overlooking the small town of Bagnaia. Nestled into a walled hunting park three miles east of Viterbo, the garden is built on a terraced slope. Water pours, gushes, tumbles, trickles, sprays and splashes its way downward through fountains, runnels, a water stair with head and tail of a crayfish, over giant river gods furred with moss, along a massive stone table with a canal down the center, fills a shimmering water parterre and ends in a basin with a statue of Pegasus misting a semicircle of caryatids. This quintessential Renaissance garden celebrates, in stone, clipped box and water, the classic virtues of symmetry, proportion, perspective, beauty and simplicity.
Stay the night in CIVITA CASTELLANA. Dinner on your own.
Friday
8th May
Morning visit to Castello Ruspoli, a fortified castle built on the ruins of an ancient Benedictine monastery on a promontory at the top of the small hill-town of Vignanello. The same family has owned it since the 16th century. Ottavia Orsini, daughter of Vicino Orsini, the man who made the Sacro Bosco at Bomarzo, married into the family in 1574. The garden was her creation, and the design remains virtually unchanged since her time. Entrance is through the castle, across the large hall, out a door at the back and across a small drawbridge spanning a narrow road, which may at one time have been a moat. There are twelve sections to the parterre, set out on a rectangular plat, and in the center is a pool with ornamental balusters. Below and to the side of the parterre is a small giardino segreto suspended above the valley far below. Lunch is included today.
In the afternoon we will travel south to Castel Gandolfo, near Rome, with possibly another garden visit en route.
Stay the night in CASTEL GANDOLFO. Dinner on your own.
Saturday
9th May
This morning, after an early breakfast, we will travel south to La Landriana. In 1956, Marchesa Lavinia Taverna and her husband bought an abandoned dairy farm near Anzio, south of Rome, a few miles from the sea. The only crops were unexploded bombs and landmines left from the battles fought during the Allied landings nearby. She soon began planting, first a few trees, then seeds of annuals, perennials and various exotics. In 1968, she hired Russell Page to create a structure for her growing collection. He designed a series of garden rooms, outlined by borders and paths. At the time of her death in 1997, the garden had grown to 25 acres and thirty-two rooms, including the Valley of Old Roses, the White Way, the Orange Garden, the Bonica Rose Walk, the Rosa Mutabilis Valley, the Italian Garden, and a Grey Garden of olive trees underplanted with cistus, lavenders, artemisia, Westringia, Iceberg roses and 1000's of other plants. Lunch is included today.
In the afternoon we will visit Ninfa. Once a powerful and prosperous town controlling a major route between Rome and the south, it was sacked in 1382. The small medieval village that rose from the ashes fell victim to malarial plagues and was finally abandoned entirely. The ruins of churches and houses, castle and town hall gradually subsided into the earth and were covered by wildflowers and the lush vegetation of the area. Men and women of the Caetani family, who have owned Ninfa since the thirteenth century, brought it back to life in the 20th. Now calla lilies line the streams, irises bloom in the meadows, wisteria festoons the railings of ancient bridges, and hundreds of roses drip from the trees. Please note: because of the fragile nature of this site, our visit is limited to a conducted tour lasting one hour thirty minutes.
Stay the night in CASTEL GANDOLFO. Dinner on your own.
Sunday
10th May
Sunday morning visit to Villa D'Este. The villa and gardens were built on the site of a former Franciscan convent in the 16th century for Cardinal Ippolito D'Este. The sweeping views from the villa are thrilling, taking in the town of Tivoli, the hills surrounding Rome, the lovely sun-baked Roman campagna. Terraces spill down a steep slope, connected by paths and stairways, to a large flat area at the bottom. Tall somber cypress trees line the long walks that traverse the terraces. Along one of those walks, for the whole of the distance, runs a stepped fountain with three tiers, one hundred small jets sending fine spray into the air and little streams trickling down over the ferns and mosses which cover spouting masks. At one end of the garden, the thundering Fountain of Neptune releases dramatic cascades on three levels. This is High Renaissance Baroque at its highest and most baroque.
Afternoon visit to Villa Adriana, built between 118 and 138 A.D. by Emperor Hadrian. Travel and building were his passions, and everywhere he went, he built bridges, aqueducts, temples, theaters and new towns. This is much more than a villa, actually a small rural town, a sumptuous complex of buildings and lakes, rich in architecture and sculpture. The ruins and excavations cover about 150 acres, but it was about five times this size in Hadrian's time. Villa Adriana is set in the hills to the east of Rome. It is an atmospheric and magical place, with olive trees dotting the dry hillsides, wildflowers carpeting the ground beneath the olives, and tall cypress trees lining the old streets. The entrance to the villa is through an opening in a great tall wall which rises almost 30 feet into the sky.
Stay the night in CASTEL GANDOLFO. We will gather this evening for a farewell dinner.
Monday
11th May
Tour over after breakfast. Morning group transfer by coach to Rome Fiumicino airport for those departing for U.S today.
