Ninfa, as place, refers not only to the fabled 20th-century garden in southern Lazio, but to the site on which it was created: an historic settlement, well known even in Roman times, which in the Middle Ages became a bustling town.
This was destroyed at the end of the 14th century, but its ruins remain wonderfully preserved. Ninfa lies 62 km south of Rome, close to the Via Appia. A sense of Ninfa’s magic can be found in the writings of Pliny the Younger, and in more recent times in those of great travellers and garden historians.
This was destroyed at the end of the 14th century, but its ruins remain wonderfully preserved. Ninfa lies 62 km south of Rome, close to the Via Appia. A sense of Ninfa’s magic can be found in the writings of Pliny the Younger, and in more recent times in those of great travellers and garden historians.
"And this is Nympha, this unreal semblance of a town ‒ its walls, its towers, its churches, its convents all half buried in the swamp, and entombed beneath the thickets of ivy.
… it is the most charming fairy tale in history and nature that I have seen anywhere in the world".
– Ferdinand Gregorovius, historian and author
Passeggiate per l’Italia (1856)
"What were once dwellings are now ruins completely buried not by mounds of earth, but under masses of roses and flowering creepers – honeysuckle, jasmine, vines run riot, and every variety of wild flowers. A placid pool reflects on its surface the ruins of a medieval tower, the remains of a Caetani fortress of the thirteenth century, under which nestles an ancient water mill still in use. The little river Ninfeo, from which the village took its name, crystal-clear, wanders through the tangled greenery, and in the spring a chorus of nightingales and other singing-birds resounds in every direction".
– Richard Bagot, author
My Italian Year (Mills & Boon, 1911)
"The voices and desires of those who gave it life
emerge like ghosts in Ninfa’s breathtaking beauty".
– Marella Caracciolo Chia, author
The Garden of Ninfa (Umberto Allemandi & C., 1995)
The Garden of Ninfa (Umberto Allemandi & C., 1995)
"Like nowhere else, Ninfa’s garden combines the ruined buildings and churches of an abandoned medieval town, highly cultured Italian ownership, 100 years of Anglo-American good taste in plants and flowers, and a luminously clear supply of running water, fresh from springs which feed the lake, the flower beds and the green charm of the place".
– Robin Lane Fox, author,
academic and garden expert
academic and garden expert
"My travels all over the world to write about gardens have acquainted me with many places of rare enchantment, but none has bewitched me as Ninfa does. … The essential quality of Ninfa is rightly described as ‘elusive’ because in its presence so many visitors are lost to the voices of this world and compare it to a paradise".
– Charles Quest-Ritson, author
Ninfa, The Most Romantic Garden in the World (Frances Lincoln, 2009).
Ninfa, The Most Romantic Garden in the World (Frances Lincoln, 2009).
"To walk through this extraordinary garden today is to pick your way through a strangely enchanted place ‒ like Sleeping Beauty’s castle in the fairy tale".
– Jeremy Musson, author
Country Life (September 2007)
Country Life (September 2007)
The Gallery House,
Picketts Lane,
Horney Common,
Uckfield, East Sussex TN22 3EG, United Kingdom
Uckfield, East Sussex TN22 3EG, United Kingdom