Florence skyline from Boboli Gardens - Firenze Santa Maria Novella railway station

At Boboli Gardens for a morning look around the gardens in Florence. It was a very hot morning in Florence. A bit dehydrating!

Boboli Gardens

The Boboli Gardens (Italian: Giardino di Boboli) is a park in Florence, Italy, that is home to a collection of sculptures dating from the 16th through the 18th centuries, with some Roman antiquities.

The Gardens, directly behind the Pitti Palace, the main seat of the Medici grand dukes of Tuscany at Florence, are some of the first and most familiar formal 16th-century Italian gardens. The mid-16th-century garden style, as it was developed here, incorporated longer axial developments, wide gravel avenues, a considerable "built" element of stone, the lavish employment of statuary and fountains, and a proliferation of detail, coordinated in semi-private and public spaces that were informed by classical accents: grottos, nympheums, garden temples and the like. The openness of the garden, with an expansive view of the city, was unconventional for its time. The gardens were very lavish, considering no access was allowed to anyone outside the immediate Medici family, and no entertainment or parties ever took place in the gardens.

The Boboli Gardens were laid out for Eleonora di Toledo, the wife of Cosimo I de' Medici. The name is a curruption of "Bogoli", a family from whom land had been bought to construct the garden. The first stage was scarcely begun by Niccolò Tribolo before he died in 1550, then was continued by Bartolomeo Ammanati, with contributions in planning from Giorgio Vasari, who laid out the grottos, and in sculpture by Bernardo Buontalenti. The elaborate architecture of the grotto in the courtyard that separates the palace from its garden is by Buontalenti.

The garden lacks a natural water source. To water the plants in the garden, a conduit was built from the nearby Arno River to feed water into an elaborate irrigation system.

The primary axis, centered on the rear façade of the palace, rises on Boboli Hill from a deep amphitheater that is reminiscent in its shape of one half of a classical hippodrome or racecourse. At the center of the amphitheater and rather dwarfed by its position is the Ancient Egyptian Boboli obelisk brought from the Villa Medici at Rome. This primary axis terminates in a fountain of Neptune (known to the irreverent Florentines as the "Fountain of the Fork" for Neptune's trident), with the sculpture of Neptune by Stoldo Lorenzi visible against the skyline as a visitor climbs the slope.

Giulio Parigi laid out the long secondary axis, the Viottolone or Cyprus Road at a right angle to the primary axis. This road led up through a series of terraces and water features, the main one being the Isolotto complex, with the bosquets on either side, and then allowed for exit from the gardens almost at Porta Romana, which was one of the main gates of the walled city. In 1617, Parigi constructed the Grotto of Vulcan (Grotticina di Vulcano) along this axis.

The gardens have passed through several stages of enlargement and restructuring work. They were enlarged in the 17th century to their present extent of 45,000 meters² (111 acres). The Boboli Gardens have come to form an outdoor museum of garden sculpture that includes Roman antiquities as well as 16th and 17th century works.

In the first phase of building, the amphitheatre was excavated in the hillside behind the palace. Initially formed by clipped edges and greens, it was later formalized by rebuilding in stone decorated with statues based on Roman myths such as the Fountain of the Ocean sculpted by Giambologna, then transferred to another location within the same garden. The small Grotto of Madama, and the Large Grotto, were begun by Vasari and completed by Ammannati and Buontalenti between 1583 and 1593.

Even while undergoing restoration work in 2015, the Large Grotto's statues are still on display and represent defining examples of Mannerist sculpture and architecture. Decorated internally and externally with stalactites and originally equipped with waterworks and luxuriant vegetation, the fountain is divided into three main sections. The first one was frescoed to create the illusion of a natural grotto, that is a natural refuge to allow shepherds to protect themselves from wild animals; it originally housed The Prisoners of Michelangelo (now replaced by copies), statues that were first intended for the tomb of the Pope Julius II. Other rooms in the Grotto contain Giambologna's famous Bathing Venus and an 18th-century group of Paris and Helen by Vincenzo de' Rossi.

I was more interested in the skyline from Boboli Gardens than the actual gardens! It was so amazing to look at! This was our last morning in Florence, for in the afternoon we would get our coach to Volterra (including a stop off at a winery).

Firenze Santa Maria Novella railway station - theses views were the only ones I had of the railway station in Florence, never actually got to go close to it during our stay in the city.

Firenze Santa Maria Novella (in English Florence Santa Maria Novella) or Stazione di Santa Maria Novella is a terminus railway station in Florence, Italy. The station is used by 59 million people every year and is one of the busiest in Italy.

It is at the northern end of the Florence–Rome direttissima, which was completed on 26 May 1992 and the southern end of the Bologna–Florence Direttissima, opened on 22 April 1934. A new high speed line to Bologna opened on 13 December 2009. The station is also used by regional trains on lines connecting to: Pisa, Livorno (Leopolda railway); Lucca, Viareggio (Viareggio–Florence railway); Bologna (Bologna–Florence railway) and Faenza (Faentina railway).

The station was inaugurated on 3 February 1848 to serve the railway to Pistoia and Pisa, and was initially called Maria Antonia (from the name of the railway, named in honour of Princess Maria Antonia of the Two Sicilies); it was much closer to the Santa Maria Novella church than the current station. It was renamed after the church after the unification of Italy.

In 1932 through a number of newspaper editorials, published in La Nazione, Florence's main daily, Romano Romanelli a reputed and influential Florentine sculptor, criticized the original project by the Architect Mazzoni for the new Firenze Santa Maria Novella railway station.[2] A constructive debate resulted in the final choice of the project sponsored by the Architect Marcello Piacentini and designed by Gruppo Toscano.

The station was designed in 1932 by a group of architects known as the Gruppo Toscano (Tuscan Group) of which Giovanni Michelucci and Italo Gamberini, Berardi, Baroni, Lusanna were among the members; the building was constructed between 1932 and 1934. The plan of the building, as seen from above, looks as if it were based on the fascio littorio, the symbol of Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party, many documents give this explanation, but, that shape was forced by the pre-existing station. The "blade" represented by the first two-passenger tracks and the postal ones were in fact the extension of the 1861 alignment which included the tracks of the line from Livorno.

The building is a prime example of Italian modernism, but has little to do with the Italian Rationalism movement, being more strongly influenced by the Viennese architecture of Loos and Hoffman, with perhaps a nod to Wright; but it is the building's complete originality that makes it outstanding. The competition to design the station was controversial but the approval by Mussolini of the Gruppo Toscano project was hailed as an official acceptance of modernity. The station was designed to replace the aging Maria Antonia Station, one of the few example of architecture by I. K. Brunel in Italy, and to serve as a gateway to the city centre.

The Gruppo Toscano was only responsible for the main frontal building of the station. The heating plant, platforms, other facilities and details such as benches were all designed in a contrasting style by the official Ministry of Communications architect, Angiolo Mazzoni. The benches and baggage shelves illustrated on this page were not part of the Gruppo Toscano project. Outside and adjacent to the station is also Michelucci's white marble Palazzina Reale di Santa Maria Novella, built to host the Royal family on visits to Florence.

While it is of a 'modern' design, the use of pietra forte for the station's stone frontage was intended to respond to and contrast with the nearby Gothic architecture of the church of Santa Maria Novella. The interior of the station features a dramatic metal and glass roof with large skylights over the main passenger concourse, which is aligned perpendicular to the tracks and acts as a pedestrian street connecting one side of the city with the other. The skylights span the passenger concourse without any supporting columns, giving a feeling of openness and vast space and reinforcing the convergence of all the public functions of the station on the passenger concourse.

Near platform #16 there is a statue and a memorial plaque in remembrance of the train loads of Jewish people who were deported from Italy to Nazi concentration camps during World War II.

Some rights reserved

Taken in: Italia / Toscana / Firenze / San Frediano (show map)

Taken on: June 27, 2018

Tags:

Florence

Firenze

Italia

Tuscany

Toscana

birthplace of the Renaissance

the Athens of the Middle Ages

UNESCO

World Heritage Site

UNESCO World Heritage Site

historic centre of Florence

Piazza Pitti

Pitti Square

Piazza de' Pitti

Palazzo Pitti

Pitti Palace

Renaissance palace

Luca Pitti

Medici family

Grand Duchy of Tuscany

Cosimo de' Medici

Giorgio Vasari

Brunelleschi

Luca Fancelli

Buonaccorso Pitti

Eleonora di Toledo

Cosimo I de' Medici

Vasari Corridor

Francesco I

Boboli hill

Boboli Gardens

Giardino di Boboli

Niccolò Tribolo

Bartolommeo Ammanati

first and most familiar formal 16th-century Italian gardens

Bogoli

Bernardo Buontalenti

Giambologna

tree

trees

skyline

Florence skyline

Santa Maria Novella railway station

Firenze Santa Maria Novella railway station

Firenze Santa Maria Novella

Florence Santa Maria Novella

Stazione di Santa Maria Novella

Rete Ferroviaria Italiana

Maria Antonia

Santa Maria Novella

electrified railway line

mountain « less

Sets appears in: • Boboli Gardens, Florence • Florence

Groups appears in: • Details of Modern Architecture • A View From Above more » • Firenze / Florence • BIRDS EYE VIEW • City Bird's Eye View • Above It All « less

Camera: Panasonic DMC-FZ72, f/5.6, 1/500 sec, 102mm, ISO 100 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Panasonic DMC-FZ72
Aperture:	f/5.6
Exposure Time:	0.002 sec (1/500)
Focal Length:	102mm
ISO:	100
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Program AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Ver.1.0
Show full info

Stats: 4,452 views