Giardini della Biennale: Napoleon's Garden and the Art World
Why is it significant?
Walk into the shade of the tall trees and the long gravel avenues, past statues, benches and dogs on their morning walk. To one side the lagoon glitters toward the Lido. Ahead, behind a fence, you glimpse buildings in wildly different styles, like a little town of embassies dropped into a park.
Key Facts
| Place | Giardini della Biennale: Napoleon's Garden and the Art World |
|---|---|
| Address | Viale Trieste, Giardini della Biennale, Castello, 30122 Venezia VE, Italy |
| Geo Coordinates | 45.42900, 12.35790 |
| Part of Walk | Lions, Shipyards and Saints: Venice's Castello and the Arsenale Beyond the Crowds |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk into the shade of the tall trees and the long gravel avenues, past statues, benches and dogs on their morning walk. To one side the lagoon glitters toward the Lido. Ahead, behind a fence, you glimpse buildings in wildly different styles, like a little town of embassies dropped into a park.
These are the Giardini, the gardens, and they are another gift, or another wound, from Napoleon. In 1807 he decreed that Venice should have a public garden, and to make room a cluster of churches, convents and houses along this shore was demolished. The architect Giannantonio Selva laid out the avenues, and for the first time Venetians had a green place to stroll that did not belong to a palace.
In 1895 the city opened an international art exhibition here, the Biennale, one of the oldest of its kind in the world. Countries soon began building their own pavilions, starting with Belgium in 1907, and today the gardens hold around thirty of them, each a small architectural statement. Alvar Aalto designed the Finnish pavilion as a wooden prefab, and the Venetian master Carlo Scarpa left his touch on several corners.
Every other year, from spring to autumn, the art world descends on this quiet corner of Castello, and in the years between come the architecture exhibitions, so the gardens are rarely still for long. Yet out of season this is simply a neighbourhood park again, one of the few places in Venice where children can learn to ride a bicycle.
Look for the statues half hidden among the trees, and for the views back toward Saint Mark's across the water, framed in green. Then follow the path along the lagoon past the pavilions, cross the bridge over the canal, and enter the pine trees of Sant'Elena, the last island of Castello.