Autumn in Tuscany: Foliage at Villa Reale di Marlia

Autumn in Tuscany in a “Great Garden of the World”:

the frame of the foliage among the hidden treasures of the Villa Reale in Marlia (LUCCA)

Recently included among the “Great Gardens of the World” together with the most prestigious examples of landscape architecture in the world, the Villa Reale di Marlia is a surprising historic residence: a unique example of heterogeneity of styles, eras, details that contribute to making Villa Reale, a property on par with the most renowned, as evidenced by its entry into the Network of the most beautiful gardens in the world, as well as its presence for years in the network of the Great Italian Gardens.

Surely still too little known, the Villa Reale di Marlia lends itself as a must see in Tuscany in the autumn months: in this period its 16 hectares of renovated gardens are tinged with the warm colors of autumn and the new restored spaces, never visited before. , make the trip out of town to Lucca, in the heart of Tuscany, complete and memorable.

Just 5 kilometers from the walls of Lucca is the architectural and landscape complex of Villa Reale di Marlia, a combination of nature, history and culture, the perfect destination for a suggestive excursion around Lucca for a trip out of town in Tuscany. A place to take time for a pleasant day outdoors or to venture into the past, to admire the foliage that characterizes the gardens at this time of the year.

Faced with so much beauty, one is amazed, especially considering that the artistic heritage of the Villa and its park today flourish after a troubled history, having gone through long moments of abandonment.

Hidden from the gaze by the foliage of a centuries-old park and by walls that seem to protect it from the passing of time, the Villa Reale di Marlia is a landscape masterpiece to be discovered, a property saved from abandonment thanks to the intervention of the Grönberg family of modern patrons. who have continued to carry out the enormous restoration work both in the park and in the buildings.

The news of 2021 enriched the visit further:

• with the extension of the tour in the apartments of the Villa Reale: the room of Felice Baciocchi, husband of Princess Elisa Bonaparte and the billiard room are added to the rooms inaugurated last year;
• with the opening of a new museum at the clock house, never open to the public before: the museum houses the cultural heritage of the great collector, Countess Anna Laetitia Pecci-Blunt, who owned the Villa Reale complex in the 1900s . A heterogeneous collection made up of memories, relics and a vast book heritage. We are talking about a decidedly eclectic museum due to the particularity and heterogeneity of its rooms: the museum of Pope Leo XIII, a library of thousands of volumes, a well-stocked newspaper library, a varied disco and 2 other rooms dedicated to the two bizarre collections of the Contessa: one dedicated to Native Americans and another with the collection of dolls with traditional international costumes.

A complex, that of Villa Reale di Marlia, which hides surprises in every corner: crossed by the avenues of the Camellias, the Park hosts trees of ancient varieties, an original olfactory path that, thanks to the power of perfumes, transports the visitor through time and precious gardens, from the Lemon Garden with the marble group of Leda and the Swan to the Spanish one in Art Déco style. And then again, in addition to the neoclassical Villa Reale and the seventeenth-century Clock House with a panoramic loggia and the Nymphaeum called “Pan’s Grotto”, the majestic and seventeenth-century Water Theatre and the first example of the Green Theatre in Europe, suggestive architecture natural that over the centuries has welcomed, among others, artists of the caliber of Jean Racine and Niccolò Paganini.

A place, Villa Reale di Marlia, which tells the past but knows how to live the present and look to the future with foresight: thanks to an ambitious restoration plan, today it offers the public a variety of experiences, in an open-air museum with large green spaces between gardens from different eras and discoveries of private environments so full of personality. An absolutely unmissable place for those who want to travel in the fall, in safety, to discover one of the hidden jewels of Tuscany.

HALLOWEEN IN TUSCANY: 30th & 31st OCTOBER 

VILLA REALE DI MARLIA