Verona (4): Giardino Giusti

Giardino Giusti: Garden of the Giusti family
​

• 1406 land purchased by Giusti family and for two hundred years factories were used for wool dyeing, which was the main source of Verona’s wealth
• During the fifteenth century a palazzo was constructed and a fashionable formal garden was laid out – consisting of box hedges, cypress trees, fountains and grottoes
• Agostino Giusti (1548 – 1615) was a driving force in the establishment – a Knight of the Venetian Republic, and enjoying contact with many influential families including the Medici’s and Habsburg’s.
• The garden became more of a focus for Agostino Giusti from 1580.
• The Giusti Garden has similar elements of those seen in Medici gardens “which provided an aesthetic reference point for the educated elite of the period”.
• The Giusti Garden became part of the Grand Tour and noted visitors included Cosimo III, Mozart, Goethe and Russian Tsar, Alexander I.
• Monty Don visited and recently featured it in his BBC ‘Italian Gardens’ programme!