If you are planning a truly special holiday in Tuscany this year, June is a marvellous time to experience the best of art cities and their hidden gems.
For painting lovers, June offers a great opportunity to take an intensive course in one of the most sublime settings of Florence.
Giardini Torrigiani, in collaboration with Galleria Romanelli, organizes intensive courses in oil painting or watercolor, lasting one week, during the month of June.
The courses will take place in the Italian garden where students will be inspired with its glimpses of statues, flowers and rare plants. The courses offer a high level of education, both in Italian and English and will be aimed at both beginners and experienced painters.
The classes are restricted to a limited number of students in order to enable teachers to closely monitor the progress of each. Each course includes a welcome cocktail at the Atelier Romanelli, a guided tour of the garden from Marquis Vanni Torrigiani Malaspina, and finally an exhibition of paintings made during the week, open to students and their guests.
For information: artcourses@raffaelloromanelli.com
info@giardinotorrigiani.it
tel. 055 2396047
ABOUT TORRIGIANI GARDENS
The Torrigiani gardens are the largest private gardens in Europe within the historical walls of a city. They cover nearly seventeen acres in the center of Florence. Renowned in the sixteenth century as a botanical garden, the park experiences a second revival in the early nineteenth century, when the Marquis Pietro Torrigiani inherited the property from an uncle. He extended it over an area of almost 25 acres by acquiring all the surrounding land and, following the taste of the time, turned it into a Romantic garden. Today it is renowned both for the rich botanic collections and for the great architectural items it embraces, such as the antique tower, almost twenty-two meters high and placed on an artificial hill.T the tower housed an important collection of astronomical instruments, as well as a library. To connect the various floors of the tower, besides the still existing stone spiral staircase, there was a mechanical chair activateded by special pullays which permitted a rapid ascent to the summit.
Inside the garden there are other original architectural structures of great interest, including the Hypogeum, the Arcadia, the Hermitage, the Gymnasium, the aviary, the river Ladon with a romantic bridge, and the bastion of defense built by Cosimo I de’ Medici in 1544 against Siena.
ACCOMODATION IN FLORENCE
We can highly recommend yet another hidden gem for a pure and authentic holiday in Florence.
It is called ‘the little Paradise’ and it truly is a peaceful shelter of the soul. Hidden behind a tall wall and accessed through a very small wooden gate, lies a lush park with a noble mansion house offering comfortable, welcoming and absolutely special accommodation in apartments and rooms. A retreat among the tastes, colours and perfumes of an ancient, simple, protective and quiet world that everyone keeps, sometimes unconsciously, in their memory. The smell of cut grass or that of mint on your balcony, the flowering almond tree or the grey stone eroded by time instantly makes you feel at home. The vineyard, the olive grove, the hens, the gardens with pool.. all just 10 minutes from Florence city centre.
For information:
http://www.villailparadisino.it/ or write to Costanza on info@ villailparadisino.it
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