La scorsa settimana sono andato con alcune nostre studentesse a visitare il giardino di Villa Garzoni a Collodi, un paese situato a est di Lucca. La Villa risale al '600 e fu costruita, a partire da un castello esistente dal 1300, dalla famiglia Garzoni di Firenze, che ne è rimasta proprietaria fino a pochi anni fa, quando, ridotta in pessimo stato di conservazione, è stata venduta a un uomo d'affari che ne ha quasi completato il restauro.
La Villa si trova in una posizione scoscesa ed ha dietro a sé l'intero vecchio paese di Collodi, con cui costituisce un insieme molto suggestivo. Il giardino è splendido, in stile barocco e disposto a terrazze, con numerose statue sia di figure mitologiche che di semplici popolani, grotte e giochi d'acqua, boschetti e sentieri, fino alla statua della Fama, che dall'alto tutto sovrasta: vale veramente la pena visitarlo e restarvi per qualche ora, specialmente in una bella giornata di sole come quella. Da visitare, oltre al giardino, anche la casa delle farfalle, un ambiente riscaldato dove vivono e si riproducono molti bellissimi esemplari di farfalle da tutto il mondo.
A visit to Villa Garzoni in Collodi
Last week I went on an excursion with some of our students to visit the garden of Villa Garzoni in Collodi, a hamlet located to the east of Lucca. The Villa was built in the 17th century on the site of a castle existing from 1300, by the family Garzoni of Florence and it has remained their property until a few years back, when it was sold in a condition of poor repair to a businessman who has almost finished restoring it.
The Villa is located on a steep slope and has the entire old hamlet of Collodi "tailwise" behind, making a most impressive composition. Its garden is gorgeous, in baroque style and with a terracing structure, with several statues of mythological as well as peasant figures, caves and water effects, groves and paths, extending up to the statue of Fame, towering above the entire slope: it was really worth visiting and lingering there for a couple of hours, especially on such a fine sunny day as we could enjoy. Beside the garden, we also visited the Butterfly House, a special building to give shelter to many species of butterflies from all the world.
But Collodi is perhaps better known for Pinocchio than for the Villa Garzoni: in fact Carlo Lorenzini, the Florentine author of the adventures of the wooden puppet spent his childhood there and later decided to take the pen-name of Carlo Collodi: his mother was from that hamlet and had worked for the Garzoni family as a maid. A nearby park is dedicated to Pinocchio, offering an artistic open-air reconstruction of his adventures to young and adult visitors from all over the world.
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