Boboli Gardens

The Boboli Gardens are 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, 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 Boboli Gardens were laid out for Eleonora di Toledo, the wife of Cosimo I de' Medici. 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.