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Buonconsiglio Castle is in Trento. It’s actually a Renaissance palace built by the Prince, bishop, and cardinal Bernardo Cles, next to Castelvecchio; in 1800, it was turned into a prison by the Austrian government.

The hanging garden, of which little remains, especially regarding its original layout, is still full of a great variety of ornamental plants. It includes the “courtyard of the lions”, a rectangular space with four flower beds, the “Loggia del Romanino”, wonderfully frescoed, a large fountain, the “Martyrs’ pit”, originally a hunting lodge, and finally the main garden, divided from the city by the castle walls.

This garden features a Renaissance loggia (used as military prison where many Italian patriots, including Cesare Battisti, Giuseppe Filzi and Leopoldo Contini, were kept), deprived of plants, fountains, and statues.
In the 1920s, it was redesigned by Giuseppe Gerola, the director of the museum he had already created inside the castle, and the superintendent of Trento which had become an Italian city after the Great War. Gerola fully restored the perimeter pergola, the flower beds enclosed by hedges, and several topiated yews. Beyond the wall, the original orchard is still visible.

This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)