Springtime in Bologna - Discovering Giardini Margherita

Bologna in Spring is at its best. The city awakens, outdoor tables of osterias and restaurants in the city center are crowded with locals and students, nature blooms on the hills around the city and in the parks of the valley and the narrow medieval city streets echo with music.

The Giardini Margherita is the largest and certainly the most popular city park. It was designed by the Piedmontese Sambuy  to provide Bologna with an ample green and public place as in other Italian and European cities. It was opened in 1879 with the name of “Passeggio Regina Margherita” ( as a tribute to the wife of King Umberto I).

The garden has a surface of 26 hectares and largely maintains the original design: it is vaguely inspired by the English romantic parks: big tree-lined avenues, a little lake surrounded by artificial gypsum cliffs, wide lawns, oaks groves and other more natural edges, a series of considerable samples trees, mainly exotics (cedars, pines, horse chestnuts, sycamores,bald cypresses,some English oaks, a sequoia).

During the works were found in the area some Etruscan sepulchres; now it is possible to admire a fine Travertine grave at the edge of the central lawn.
On the south side of the lake it is possible to see a short open-air section of the ancient Savena canal (1176), one of the waterway which once characterised the city.

Fonte: Biblioteca Salaborsa , Bologna Welcome
All rights reserved to: Biblioteca Salaborsa , Bologna Welcome