The Giardino dei Ciucioi, also called Giardino Bortolotti, is a unique hanging garden, where ruins and vegetation play together to create an atmosphere suspended halfway between dream and reality.
It is an example of romantic architecture, through which an attempt has been made to revive a fantastic and picturesque landscape, a very particular monumental complex, arranged on a series of artificial terraces, surrounded by evocative architectural structures, which is part of the creations dictated by the eclectic taste of the first half of the nineteenth century.
The Garden of the Ciucioi develops in a spiral ramp path, with the building called the Gardener’s House at the top, where terraces crowned with curious structures follow one another:
the facade of a neo-gothic church
an unfinished castle with an arcade
a cryptoportico
a Renaissance loggia
Moorish spires
In its heyday, a large greenhouse, similar to the lemon groves of Lake Garda, housed magnificent rare plants: palms, lemons, magnolias, oranges, olive trees.
For many decades the garden attracted the interest of foreigners, who stopped in Lavis to visit it. The First World War seriously damaged the garden, whose plants were then the victim of a terrible drought in 1921.
