Charles Quest-Ritson, The most romantic garden in the world Ninfa, Umberto Allemandi & C. Editore, Turin 2009,
pp. 128 with numerous colour images, € 25.00

  The magnificent volume is the Italian translation of the original title Ninfa. It narrates, with vision and passion, the history of this small village, since its foundation to nowadays, focusing on the most important point and highlighting the principal characters without omitting the dangers that could run the garden, true treasure of humanity. The Most Romantic Gardens in the World , published by Frances Lincoln Limited Publishes in London in 2009.

Charles Quest-Ritson is the writer. Author of texts as The English Garden Abroad (1992), the English Garden. To social History (2001), Climbing Roses of the Word (2003), but also The Gardens in Europe (2007) a guide ranging from Ireland to Georgia, from Russia to Sicily describing all the types of garden (starting from the ancient Roman tracks to nowadays avant garde) active in the Netherlands and France. He was the founder of the International Friends of Ninfa Association and one of the best experts of Ninfa garden having studied for more than 20 years history, management and botanical species in this corner of paradise. 



The first items on Ninfa date at the first century b.C., with the testimony of Plinio the elder who describes a temple dedicated to the sacred nymph, whose foundations have been found recently. Only after the fall of the Roman Empire we know of a small inhabited town. The depopulation of the area was due to the incremental giving up of the Via Appia, the consular road that from Rome lead to Terracina, Naples and to Greece, and because of the abandon of the Pontine marsheins maintenance. Ninfa develops precisely along a re-routing, the Pedemontana and also thanks to the creation of a dam which allowed the use of Hydro-electric energy for grinding , skin tanning and metalwork. Around the 30th in the XII century, after the troubled events that envolved the papacy and the Italian Empire of the Franks, the Frangipane family built the first fortified tower of the town and perhaps also the first walls, but is above all Boniface VIII who offers security to these places, giving to his grandson Peter Caetani Sermoneta and Bassianus castles and other properties on the Ninfa hills. Two century later the influential cardinal Nicolò Caetani decided to demolish the fortifications to build a garden. With the help of the architect Francis Capriani from Volterra, he arranged a beautiful place in which entrance was posted the inscription Gardens Nynpharum Domus Caetanorum, a ‘hortus conclusus’: in it two central small paths ending in a octagonal stone bath and various essences including citrus crops from Sicily. In the 17th century the Francis as vicerè to dry up the marshy surrounding Ninfa planted bulbs coming from the Netherlands. Since now Ninfa starts gradually to become even more famous, also thanks to the descriptions of travellers as Ferdinand Gregorovius or Augustus Hare who describe that wonderful beauty in their books. At the end of the 19th century the Prince Gelasius Caetani takes again the restoration of Ninfa charging with a payment that garden that impressed him since his early childhood, the very same garden whose roses had been planted first by his mother Ada.

The history of this extraordinary oasis of nature goes on till today with other important characters: from the Duke Roffredo and the Princess Lelia ad Duchess Marguerite and Hubert Howard to the Foundation that defends and holds this corner of Paradise.  

Mario Pisani