At the Boboli Gardens with Fyodor Dostoevsky and Henry James

Fyodor Dostoevsky had fled to Italy to escape his creditors. His goal was to write in peace, aided by the stenographer Anna Grigor'evna Snitkina, very quick to strike the keys with her fingertips, who would later become his wife. The author of Demons rented a modest house in the historical centre of Florence, a few metres away from the Pitti Palace, which had the advantage of being close to the Boboli Gardens where Fëdor would carve out some leisure hours, especially in winter when the literary power of this park designed from 1549 by the architect and sculptor Niccolò Tribolo to satisfy the botanical desire of Duchess Eleonora di Toledo, consort of Cosimo I de' Medici, is uncontainable. Other writers loved to frequent Boboli assiduously in the cold months: Henry James liked to linger by the Amphitheatre, skimming over the stone steps, while the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning delighted in reaching for the evergreens, taking advantage of the proximity of her home in the Tuscan capital. On the other hand, Donatien-Alphonse-François de Sade, better known as the Marquis de Sade, not only used to sneak into the Limonaia built by Zanobi del Rosso when he found it open, to smell the citrus trees, but was always enchanted by the Fountain of Neptune designed by the Flemish-born sculptor Giambologna. Strolling in this season along the long avenues, around the Kaffeehaus, an excellent example of Rococo architecture, among the Renaissance statues and the grotta grande, fruit of Bernardo Buontalenti's imagination, means gaining a unique botanical intimacy in this garden that runs along the ancient walls of Florence as far as Porta Romana, as the most illustrious members of the Medici and Habsburg-Lorraine court used to do. At lunchtime you can choose the winter menu at the Irene restaurant, and then go to. visit the Botanical Garden and Giardino dei Semplici in the afternoon, which recently celebrated the 250th anniversary of the Natural History Museum: orchids, tropical carnivorous plants, and cycads estimated at eighty specimens are the jewels of the greenhouses to be enjoyed especially during this winter garden tour.