Giardino delle Rose: A Rose Garden Under the View

Why is it significant?

Go through the gate and down the first steps: suddenly the coaches and the selfie sticks have gone, and you are on narrow terraces of roses, bright against the grey of the olive trees, with the domes and towers of Florence floating above the hedges. In May the smell alone is enough to stop you.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Go through the gate and down the first steps: suddenly the coaches and the selfie sticks have gone, and you are on narrow terraces of roses, bright against the grey of the olive trees, with the domes and towers of Florence floating above the hedges. In May the smell alone is enough to stop you.

This slope was laid out in 1865 by the same Giuseppe Poggi who built the terrace above, as part of his grand plan for the hills. It opened to the public in 1895, and today it holds hundreds of varieties of roses, from old botanical species to modern hybrids. The best time to come is from late April to early June, when the beds are in full flower; in winter it is a quiet garden of bare canes and views.

Walk down to the lower terraces and you will meet some strange visitors. Quiet bronze figures stand among the beds, dreamers and travellers in long coats, gazing out at the city. These are sculptures by the Belgian artist Jean-Michel Folon, given to the city after his death. Folon loved Florence, and his dreamers seem quite at home looking out over it.

In one corner there is also a small Japanese garden, with stones, water and a lantern, a sign of the friendship between Florence and its twin city of Kyoto. And look under the rose bushes... you will often see the garden's cats, who regard the whole place as their private property.

It is a reminder that on this hill, nature and design have always worked together: Poggi planned the slopes as carefully as the roads. Leave by the lower gate onto Via di San Salvatore al Monte and follow it downhill to the river, where a single tall tower stands alone in a square.