Torrecchia Vecchia is a private estate of over 1500 acres located in

Cisterna di Latina Cisterna di Latina is a town and ''comune'' in the province of Latina in Lazio, of central Italy. It was the scene of the Battle of Cisterna in January 1944. The Garden of Ninfa is located in the commune's territory. The town, then known as ''T ...

Lazio Lazio ( , ; ) or Latium ( , ; from Latium, the original Latin name, ) is one of the 20 Regions of Italy, administrative regions of Italy. Situated in the Central Italy, central peninsular section of the country, it has 5,714,882 inhabitants an ...

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

, which may be visited by permission. It contains over 625 acres of woodland, was recognized as a Natural Monument in 2007, and contains notable English-style gardens designed by Lauro Marchetti, Dan Pearson, and others. The estate originally contained a medieval hilltop village and ruined castle, but was abandoned some 800 years ago. In 1991 Prince

Carlo Caracciolo '' Don'' Carlo Caracciolo, 9th Prince of Castagneto, 4th Duke of Melito (23 October 1925 – 15 December 2008), was an Italian publisher. He created Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso, one of Italy's leading publishing groups, which included Italy's n ...

, an Italian newspaper baron, and his wife Violante Visconti bought the estate, and hired architect

Gae Aulenti Gaetana "Gae" Emilia Aulenti (; 4 December 1927 – 31 October 2012) was an Italian architect and designer. Aulenti began her career in the early 1950s, establishing herself as one of the few prominent female architects in post-war Italy. Alth ...

to convert its 17th-century barn into a villa. Violante Visconti decided to create a garden around the villa, originally with the help of Lauro Marchetti, curator of the nearby

Garden of Ninfa The Garden of Ninfa is a garden in the territory of Cisterna di Latina, in the province of Latina, central Italy. The park has an area of , and is an Italian natural monument. The landscape garden within the park comprises and contains medieval ...

, and from 1995 onwards to designs by Dan Pearson. His contributions were primarily in green and white colors, per her direction. Over the next five years, Pearson visited twice a year; in 1999 he appointed his student Stuart Barfoot to continue the work under his guidance. After Violante's death in 2000, the two gardeners worked closely with Caracciolo to extend the garden with a wider range of color in the new areas.

References

Torrecchia Vecchia

"Monumento Naturale Torrecchia Vecchia"
Rete della Dimore Storiche de Lazio. * ''Monumenti dello Stato Pontificio e relazione topografica di ogni paese: Lazio e le sue memorie'', Opera di Giuseppe Marocco, Volume 6, Boulzaler, 1835, page 77. * ''Natural Selection: a year in the garden'', by Dan Pearson, Faber & Faber, 2017, "Paradise Regained", entry for July 18.
"At the gardens of Torrecchia Vecchia designer Dan Pearson has spent 20 years cultivating a romantic arcadia"
House & Garden Magazine. {{coord missing, Italy Ninfa Parks in Lazio Cisterna di Latina