Presented today in Venice the Restoration Project of the Royal Gardens of Venice. The President of the Venice Gardens Foundation Onlus Adele Re Rebaudengo and the Chief Executive Officer of Assicurazioni Generali Philippe Donnet, with the Mayor of the City of Venice Luigi Brugnaro took part in the press conference organized inside the Santi Pavilion, the historic Coffee House of the Royal Gardens. , the Director General of the State Property Agency Roberto Reggi, representing the Superintendency of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the Municipality of Venice and the Lagoon, the architect Anna Chiarelli, and two of the architects responsible for the restoration project Paolo Pejrone and Alberto Torsello.
“The Restoration of the Royal Gardens is the first intervention to which our Foundation is dedicated – he declared Adele Re Rebaudengo, President of the Venice Gardens Foundation. We are proud to start a journey that will bring back this magical place, much loved by the Venetians, in the historic heart of the city, to its ancient splendor and meaning. Restored, the Royal Gardens will be formal and rigorous, as prescribed by the historic nineteenth-century design, and at the same time full of unexpected and unforeseen angles. They can be traveled in the shade of the long and ancient pergola of wisteria, discovered among the thick evergreen wings, in an intimate and vast, timeless journey which, via the drawbridge, will arrive at the Correr Museum, in the renewed dialogue with Piazza San Marco and the Marciana area. They will be a meeting place open to the depth of the arts, where nature and artistic languages will be combined with the care of the garden in all its elements of life".
The Chief Executive Officer of Assicurazioni Generali, Philippe Donnet, he said: “We are proud to be the sole partner of the Venice Gardens Foundation in the important restoration project of the Royal Gardens. Venice has a leading role for us, due to the indissoluble historical bond that has united Generali to the lagoon city for 185 years. Now the time has come to rediscover our roots and revitalize our presence in this city, like others where we boast an equally historic presence, starting with Trieste, where it all began. The Gardens are the first step. We will make our contribution through the activities for the public that we will carry out together with the Gardens Foundation in the Royal Gardens, but also through the redevelopment of the Procuratie Vecchie which will become a place of openness to the outside and of discussion on the major contemporary social issues concerning the humanity".
The Venice Gardens Foundation Onlus signed, on 23 December 2014, with the State Property Agency and the City of Venice the Act of Concession of the Royal Gardens aimed at the restoration, conservation, maintenance, enhancement and management of the Compendium for a period of 19 years renewable. The restoration and enhancement intervention will be carried out in partnership with Assicurazioni Generali, and contemplates the botanical and landscape restoration of the Gardens, by the architect Paolo Pejrone, the restoration of the neoclassical Pavilion by Lorenzo Santi and the pergola now in ruins with the project by the architect Alberto Torsello, the restoration of the Serra with the Aymonino-Barbini-Torsello project, and the restoration of the historic drawbridge that connects the Royal Gardens with Piazza San Marco and with the museum system of the Marciana area.
The Venice Gardens Foundation Onlus has chosen to entrust the botanical restoration project to Paolo Pejrone – gardener and architect, pupil of Russell Page and Roberto Burle-Marx and currently President of the Piedmontese Garden Academy and of APGI, the Italian Parks and Gardens Association – who designs and builds public and private gardens in Italy and abroad for more than forty years “A garden in Venice is a challenge – underlined Pejrone. The Lagoon, with its known sudden changes in temperature and its insidious humidity, is extremely selective. Strong and generous plants thrive there: wisteria, hydrangeas, agapanthus, ligularia, camellias, clerodendrons, irises and bamboo, together with the plants of the Mediterranean maquis, will be their green inhabitants, between East and West, between oranges and pomegranates, parts of a lively, colorful and exuberant whole. After many years, the Royal Gardens finally come back to life to become an example of botanical refinement and exuberance, but also a modern symbol of sobriety and sustainability.”
As regards instead the architectural renovation, the project was entrusted to Alberto Torsello developing the Project by Carlo Aymonino and Gabriella Barbini with the Venice Studio. "The restoration and enhancement of the monumental Compendium renews principles, urban and architectural themes that gave life to the original nineteenth-century project of the Garden - recalled Torsello - with the aim of restoring the correct relationships between the parts and the areas of which composes in symbiosis with the context. Once the neoclassical pavilion by Lorenzo Santi and the XNUMXth-century pergola have been restored, the greenhouse and the historic drawbridge have been restored, the Royal Gardens will once again be adequately inserted into the context of the Marciana area, giving back to the city and its inhabitants a special space which by now had remained only in the memory of citizens and scholars.”
Once the works have been completed, the Venice Gardens Foundation will manage the conservation of the monumental Compendium with specialized professional figures and specific maintenance programs, a synthesis of ancient knowledge and new and more advanced techniques.
