Rome: City of Gardens

The first book to celebrate the Eternal City’s exquisite gardens, from ancient times to modern day
Rome is – and always has been – a city of gardens. Since ancient times, the Italian city’s green hills, from the imperial Palatine to the rural Janiculum, have been covered with ornamental gardens, orchards, and groves.
Rome: City of Gardens invites readers to explore three “golden ages” of Roman horticulture through twenty-four intriguing outdoor spaces. Featured are the romantic ruins and sculpture of Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli; the splendid water theater of the Villa d’Este; the lush terraces of the Villa Lante and the secluded Belvedere Courtyard and Casino of Pius IV within the Vatican. More contemporary designs include Palazzo Parisi, the family estate of Arabella Lennox-Boyd; La Torrechia Vecchia, a green-and-white garden by Dan Pearson that winds around the ruins of a medieval town; and the reimagining of the Bass Garden and the Villa Aurelia by Laurie Olin, at the American Academy in Rome.
Each garden is showcased with lush, specially commissioned photography, as well as handsome antiquarian prints. Gregory Long’s authoritative text delves into the fascinating stories behind the gardens – romantic tales starring a unique array of artists and architects, Roman emperors and empresses, cardinals, popes, aesthetes and social climbers, aristocrats, and nouveaux riches.
Beautifully designed, with a stunning cover stamped in white foil, Rome: City of Gardens is an unforgettable grand tour of the region’s alluring outdoor oases.

Gregory Long is president emeritus of the New York Botanical Garden and a consultant on strategic planning for multiple international cultural institutions. A lifelong admirer of Rome, he has been immersed in studying the gardens in and around the city as a visiting scholar at the American Academy in Rome. Long is the author of Historic Houses of the Hudson Valley and Rescue and Revival: The New York Botanical Garden 1989–2018 and the editor of The New York Botanical Garden, a commemorative monograph to celebrate its centennial.
Matteo Carassale is a well-known interiors and landscape photographer whose work is frequently published in Marie Claire Maison Italy and other major international publications. He is a contributing photographer to La Foce: Paradise in Tuscany and Gardens and Landscapes: Ten Spaces of Beauty.
Alessandra Vinciguerra is director of horticulture at the American Academy in Rome and the director of the Walton garden, La Mortella, at Ischia.