After ten years of abandonment, the new park was inaugurated yesterday near Piazzale Michelangelo, just below the Iris garden, in place of the former campsite. A 450 thousand euro restyling intervention for a green space “with a cultural and contemporary vocation”. An inauguration with a street art intervention in the presence of the mayor Dario Nardella and the councilors Andrea Giorgio, Cosimo Guccione, Sara Funaro, candidate for mayor of the centre-left, and Maria Federica Giuliani, as well as the new president of District 1 Mirco Rufilli. “We have worked for a long time for the complete regeneration of this splendid place – said Nardella -, now transformed into a garden available to everyone within the UNESCO area, for an increasingly liveable centre, contrary to what continues to be say, that spaces in the city are being privatized and sold off.”
The intervention focused on improving accessibility and making it safe. Many existing vehicular and pedestrian routes have been recovered as far as possible by integrating them with new ones. From an external pedestrian path that starts from the square in front of the Iris Garden car park you reach a gate from which a view of Florence and the Fiesole hill opens up. As regards the greenery, all the trees were checked, the approximately 700 olive trees were preserved, the plants and areas invaded by brambles were cleaned, and the hedges were contained and reformed. Furthermore, picnic areas and a small area to play football for the little ones have also been created, with wooden goals.
“After years of degradation and abandonment, an enormous space is being returned to the citizens and the neighborhood – underlined the environmental councilor Giorgio -: we strongly wanted a space for everyone, not a tourist one, where one can relax and participate in cultural activities, increasingly convinced that greenery can be a new way of building sociality. The park will also be the first to have a precise cultural vocation: these days there is the Street Levels gallery crew who will be working on hundreds of square meters of walls creating works of art. contemporary street art”. Speaking at the inauguration, Sara Funaro, mayoral candidate for the centre-left, said that she would like, “given the proximity to San Miniato al Monte”, that the park “had a call for peace, given that the Abbey itself was recently the of some initiatives related to peace and dialogue”.
