The first evening meeting of the three organized by the Diocesan Museum of Imola, as part of “Summer evenings in the historic garden. Meetings in the green”, will feature Edoardo Santoro, curator of the medieval botanical garden of Palazzo Madama in Turin, who will talk to the public about how to design, conserve and enhance a historic garden, starting from the experience of the Turin garden of which he is curator. The appointment is Thursday 13 June, at 9pm, in the historic “Mons. Giovanni Signani”, in the Bishop’s Palace, in Piazza Duomo 1, in Imola.
The first information on the garden of the castle of Turin dates back to 1402, during the government of Louis, Prince of Achaia (1402-1418). The sources that mention the garden are the expense accounts up to 1516. To recreate the garden, the indications contained in these medieval documents were therefore followed, respecting the traditional division of the space into hortus (vegetable garden), viridarium (woodland and orchard) and iardinum domini (prince’s garden) as well as the presence of traditional furnishings (falconara, pigsty, chicken pen). The Garden lends itself to multiple socio-educational uses. For Palazzo Madama it represents a great opportunity for development and expansion of the museum offer, both for the itineraries and for the possibility of directing educational policies towards new themes linked to the ecology of the city, to the importance of green areas in life of the communities, their history and the problems of their protection today. The reconstruction of the medieval garden allows the approach to now marginal plant species, recovering the meaning and value of bio-diversity, favoring and promoting projects in collaboration with other city institutions.
Edoardo Santoro will describe what a historic garden is, the differences and similarities between a medieval botanical garden and a late eighteenth-century Italian garden such as the Historic Garden of the Bishop’s Palace of Imola, then underlining the delicate phases of design, conservation and valorisation of a type of garden such as the historic one, so present in Italy even today.
The conversation will be accompanied by the projection of images specially prepared by the speaker.
