Art Gardens of the Ligurian Riviera: From Monet to Contemporary Installations

The Ligurian Riviera between Ventimiglia and Imperia is home to several historic art gardens. Claude Monet painted views of Bordighera from Villa Mariani's garden, which now houses the Museo del pittore Pompeo Mariani. The Giardino di Irene in Sasso, founded by journalist and gallerist Irene Brin (Maria Vittoria Rossi) of Rome's L'Obelisco gallery, is a landscape garden with cypresses, euphorbias, and magnolias, featuring contemporary artworks by Dompè, Pomodoro, Perez, Porfidia, and recent Premio 'Arte nel Giardino di Irene Brin' winner Emanuele De Ruvo. The Giardino Esotico Pallanca, founded by the Pallanca family in the mid-19th century with design by landscape architect Ludwig Winter, is a botanical garden of cacti and succulents covering over 10,000 square meters with 30,000 specimens, considered the most important in Italy and among the top five in Europe. The Museo e Giardino di Clarence Bicknell, founded in 1888 and designed by English architect Clarence Tait, is a natural garden with Ficus macrophylla trees, a museum of botanical paintings, a natural history library, and collections of photographs, maps, and travel notebooks.