Not everyone knows the Venice of its gardens, that of the 500 private gardens, adorned with every gem of nature, perhaps exotic and very colourful, but also that of the "paradise on earth" of the secret gardens of the Giudecca.
With the ferry from San Marco you take the Giudecca canal to return to the station, as an alternative to the Grand Canal, passing between Dorsoduro and the "city" front of ancient Spinalonga. But if we happened to see Giudecca "from the back", we would notice that oasis of Franciscan peace that once competed with the architecture of the Redentore
for creativity and beauty.
We are talking about the secret Renaissance gardens of Venice, in which the gardens of simple plants, useful for the pharmacy and the apothecary of the convent, alternate with olive trees and all sorts of delicacies, in the very particular microclimate of the lagoon.
Among the ancient workshops, chapels, botanical laboratories, greenhouses and apiaries for producing honey, one hectare of a green and secret Venice is about to be opened to the general public.
While waiting for the floral palette that will be colored by next spring, the orchards are already designing almost wild scenographies, alternating with the choreographies of the herbariums.
The Capuchin friars contemplate, converse almost in ecstasy, in a completely new Venice, on the indistinct horizon of a lagoon that almost always gets lost in the indefinite.
Thanks to the Venice Gardens Foundation, thanks to a philological botanical and architectural restoration, the ancient Venetian pergolas in chestnut wood will return, surrounded by grapes, roses, wisteria and begonias.
Between the Garden of Ottilia and the Garden of the Fortuny Weaving, also on the Giudecca, the water lilies will return to dance - a tribute to the East - in the large central basin.
We will return to walking among cypresses, rose gardens, medicinal herbs, up to the pittosporums on the shore, as the works continue for the next two years, being able to follow them.
The eyes of the Venetians rejoice.
They celebrate the souls of those who made Venice the most beautiful city in the world.
Even that of Andrea Palladio.
Remembering how during the last years of his life, an old and tired Proto of the Republic walked along these paths, explaining to the friars how soon the light would delicately caress the interiors of what would become his most famous Basilica.
The journey of discovery of Andrea Palladio's Venetian Basilicas is adorned with a new extraordinary attraction.