Giardino di Villa Le Balze

The American philosopher Charles Augustus Strong, in 1914, entrusted the construction of the villa and the garden to the English landscapist Cecil Pinset and the architecture historian Geoffrey Scott. Having to use a long and narrow terracing, the composition is centred on the villa at whose sides the "stanze di verzura" (a little ilex wood cut in a certain shape and the lemon-garden with a central basin) open, and, under the staircase, we find the grotta, typical of the Italian baroque style garden. The end of the garden is marked with the stone statue of a hermit.