Giardini Margherita

It was a beautiful Friday morning and we decided to walk to the Gardens of Margherita.  Below is a pretty piazza we came into while making our way through the narrow streets to the park.

It is the largest and the most popular city park. It was designed by the Piemontese 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, with its surface of 26 hectares, 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). 

Swimming turtles (you can just see the baby at the top right)

Sunning turtles

We had lunch here overlooking the little lake - very peaceful and a great warm day

Mallards

Huge pine tree with one huge root system

Great for climbing 

and sitting

Statue of Vittorio Emanuele II

In 1860, this statue, portraying King Vittorio Emanuele II on his horse, originally stood in the Piazza Maggiore; in 1943 the monument was moved to the Giardini Margherita, where it stands today. 

Piazza Carducci on our way back to the apartment - Giosue Carducci Memorial Garden with the grand "Carducci Monument" in Carrara marble made by Leonardo Bistolfi in 1928. 

Giosuè Carducci, who had come to live in Bologna because he had been appointed by the Ministry for Education to the Chair of Italian Eloquence at the University of Bologna, lived here from 1890 to 1907 (the year of his death).  He was a writer and poet.

a pretty residence on this street

The Porto Maggiore just down the street from our apartment

Tomorrow we leave for a week in Austria -  Vienna and Salzburg