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Plan of the garden
with the main botanical species
A view of the garden
The garden fountain and Neptune shrine in the background
A view of the Grand Canal
from the garden
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A detail of the garden entrance
representing the Barnabo initial
The
garden
The garden of Palazzo Malipiero was
created, together with many others, at the end of the
eighteenth century, when the large palace gardens situated on the
outskirts of the city disappeared because of residential and industrial
development.
No doubt due to the particularities
of the building plan, with a large entrance hall connecting
Campo San Samuele to the courtyard, the garden's layout
is most original: the area, compartmented by a simple design
of hedge lines, extends along the building and is aligned
both on the courtyard and the Grand Canal.
Thus the garden, when viewed from the Grand Canal, is divided
in two symmetrical parts centred around a Hercule's Nymph fountain.
The latter is also aligned with the seventeenth century
entrance hall, so that a perspective view can be seen
when entering the palace from the main door, through to
the fountain a a statue of Neptune inserted in the
opposite garden wall.
In the garden has been placed the large well
(originally in the inner courtyard) that, with the family coat-of-arms
and the sculpted figures of the bride and bridegroom Elisabetta e Caterino,
bear witness to the union between the Cappellos and the Malipieros.
From the end of 1800's, a number of statues
have contributed to enrich the garden landscaping. The hedge,
thanks to its intense colouring and precise pruning, conveys
a further sophisticated touch to this precious garden.
Anna Guglielmi (eng. Alessandro Barnabò widower, who died in 2016) dedicated herself to it with great affection, embellishing the eighteenth-century structure by placing the magnificent Malipiero-Cappello wedding well ring at the center of a floral surface.
For years, she lavished her best efforts and resources by filling the garden with every variety of roses (chosen by her at the vivaio Vanderborre -flover nursery-) and resumed the Barnabò family's effort to move the garden from its original late-romantic nineteenth-century layout (the Palazzo's façade at that time all covered by ivy) to a flower garden in spring by bringing it back to rediscover its visitors's much admired ancient appearance.
Since 2022, the new owner, succeeding the transferor Marco Jr Barnabò and its last years' greyness, with the declared intention of relaunching the effort towards a stronger and deeper cultural use with its great reopening to visitors as it was during the Anna Guglielmi-Barnabò's time.
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