【BOOK DESCRIPTION】
Rome is not only a city defined by ancient monuments, churches, and palaces, but also a “green city” with a rich and enduring garden culture. Since ancient Roman times, its rolling hills—from the Palatine to the Janiculum—have been dotted with ornamental gardens, orchards, wooded grounds, and private estates. As empires, the papacy, and aristocratic culture evolved, these outdoor spaces continued to change, offering an important perspective through which to understand Rome’s history, art, and way of life.
《Rome: City of Gardens》is the first comprehensive book devoted to the development of Rome’s gardens. Through twenty-three distinctive gardens and estates, it guides readers across three golden ages of Roman horticulture. Featured sites include the poetic ruins and sculptures of Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli, the dramatic water features and fountain theater of the Villa d’Este, the lush terraced gardens of the Villa Lante, and the Belvedere Courtyard and Casina of Pius IV within the Vatican. Together, they reveal how classical gardens combine architecture, sculpture, water, and natural topography to create spaces of order, movement, and theatrical beauty.
Alongside these historic gardens, the book also explores contemporary landscape design. Highlights include Palazzo Parisi, the family estate of landscape designer Arabella Lennox-Boyd; La Torrecchia Vecchia, designed by Dan Pearson around the ruins of a medieval town; and the redesigned Bass Garden and Villa Aurelia by Laurie Olin at the American Academy in Rome. These projects demonstrate that Rome’s garden tradition is not confined to the past, but continues to be reinterpreted through new approaches to design and planting.
Author Gregory Long offers an engaging and authoritative account of the history, evolution, and personalities behind each garden. Artists, architects, emperors and empresses, cardinals, popes, aristocrats, social climbers, and members of the newly wealthy all appear throughout these stories, showing how gardens have served not only as beautiful landscapes, but also as expressions of power, faith, society, taste, and personal ambition.
The book is richly illustrated with specially commissioned photography and rare historical prints. From sweeping views of spatial layouts to detailed studies of planting, water features, sculpture, and architecture, the images capture the depth and beauty of Rome’s garden heritage. Its elegant design and white foil-stamped cover further make the book itself a highly collectible object.
More than a book on gardens and landscape design, 《Rome: City of Gardens》is a grand journey through Rome from antiquity and the Renaissance to the present day. Through the green spaces hidden within the city and its surrounding countryside, it reveals a lesser-known yet equally captivating side of the Eternal City’s natural and cultural landscape.
【DETAILS】
Authors: Gregory Long (Author), Alessandra Vinciguerra (Foreword), Matteo Carassale (Photographer)
Publisher: Monacelli Press
Publication Year: 2026
Dimensions: 32 × 26 cm
Binding: Hardcover
Pages: 256
