Secret Gardens and Hidden Courtyards of Florence

Florence reveals itself in layers. The first layer — the Duomo, the Ponte Vecchio, the Piazza della Signoria — belongs to everyone. But behind the austere stone façades of the city's Renaissance palazzi lies a second, quieter Florence: a city of hidden courtyards, secret gardens, and walled green spaces that have offered respite from the Tuscan heat since the fifteenth century.

Our own La Corte Segreta is one such space — a courtyard garden of jasmine, lemon trees, and climbing wisteria concealed behind the hotel's Renaissance façade on Via Porta Rossa. Guests discover it with a mixture of surprise and delight: a garden in the middle of a city that seems, at first glance, to be entirely built of stone.

Florence's tradition of the giardino segreto — the secret garden — dates to the Medici, who understood that power requires quiet places in which to think. The Boboli Gardens, behind the Palazzo Pitti, are the most famous example, but the city is threaded with smaller, less-known spaces. The Giardino Bardini, the Iris Garden above Piazzale Michelangelo, and the cloister garden of Santa Maria Novella each offer something that the crowded streets cannot: stillness.

Our Art Concierge can arrange private visits to several of these gardens, including spaces not normally open to the public. A morning walk through the Bardini gardens — arriving before the gates open to the public, with a botanical guide who knows every specimen by name — is among the most requested experiences at the Relais.

To stay at Relais La Capricciosa is to understand that Florence's greatest luxury is not marble or gold, but the quiet green spaces hidden behind every second doorway.