4 autumn walks in European parks | EUROtoday

Pictorial: Stourhead, UK

Ppromenade within the creativeness of banker Henry Hoare II (1705-1785), Stourhead (Wiltshire) is an Arcadian picture impressed by the best landscapes of Claude Lorrain. At 36, the financier with “natural” tendencies retired completely to his father’s property to create a pastoral and historic poem the place water can be the mirror of his goals. Bringing collectively a number of ponds shaped by the Stour, Hoare created a lake within the middle of the property which then coated at least 4,500 hectares. And the country panorama turns into a scrumptious setting.

A grassy bridge marks the beginning of an alley which encircles the lake haunted by nymphs and whose route reveals a collection of compositions of nice magnificence: the temples of Flora and Apollo, the pantheon, so many small Palladian buildings representing a part of The Aeneid that the financier commissioned from the architect Henry Flitcroft.

Only a mysterious cave the place the nymph Ariadne rests, lulled by the tune of water, is hidden from view. The stroll alongside the water’s edge is a delight. Along the banks, the reflection of dazzling foliage provides to the fantastic thing about this fantasy panorama. Planted with beeches, firs and rhododendrons, Stourhead is likely one of the most lovely landscaped parks on this planet: Stanley Kubrick made no mistake in filming a number of scenes of Barry Lindon.

Stourton, Warminster BA12 6 QF.

Enigmatic: the Sacro Bosco of Bomarzo, Italy

IFirst of all, there’s this very unusual pavilion which appears to break down, defying the legal guidelines of geometry and gravity. A curious introduction to this backyard of goals, the small development with its falsely unstable stability shakes the customer’s orientation: “You who travel the world in search of sublime and frightening miracles, come to these places and you will see terrible faces, elephants, lions, bears, cannibals and dragons. » Everything is said. Engraved in stone, these words summarize the design of Pier Francesco “Vicino” Orsini (1523-1583) to rival the magnificence of his neighbor Alexander Farnese by creating an incomparable garden at the gates of his heavy palace in Bomarzo (Lazio).

For more than thirty years, this great traveler steeped in Antiquity developed the adjoining forest by populating it with monumental and frightening sculptures placed where nature itself had placed blocks of stone which the architect Pirro Ligorio used to create these monuments. A sleeping nymph, the petrified cry of a monster, Neptune, a screaming mask, sirens, lions… Lurking in the undergrowth, these deities escaped from mythology emerge like ghosts from the “Sacro Bosco”, this sacred grove which invites you to get lost. Inhabited by the gods, Bomarzo is a silent enigma that time and the moss that covers it soothe.

Location Giardino, Bomarzo.

Dreamlike: the park of Dessau-Wörlitz, in Germany

LThe oars plunge gently into the depths of the smooth, dark waters of the immense lake, a dead arm of the Elbe which is lost in canals. Here and there small buildings emerge, a temple of Diana, of Flora, another of Venus, a Gothic house… and magnificent trees everywhere. Wörlitz (Saxony-Anhalt) is a stroll on the water, a silent foray into the dreams of Prince Leopold III Frederick Francis of Anhalt-Dessau (1740-1817), who wanted to make a garden of his entire kingdom. A gigantic English-style park with no fence separating it from the countryside, the place extends over more than 112 hectares.

Dedicated to beauty, it retraces the Grand Tour that the prince made in Europe with his friend, Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Erdmannsdorff, future architect of German classicism… The omnipresence of water, the strings of islands connected by bridges Chinese, an extraordinary miniature Vesuvius, this picturesque work reads like a painting evoking the travel memories of the prince, who will put them up for more than forty years to offer them to his subjects. So that everyone can taste beauty and access meditation.

The Wörlitz Gardens are open free of charge all year round. Schloss und Park Wörlitz, Kirchgasse, Oranienbaum-Wörlitz D-06785/ OT Wörlitz.

Romantic: Jeurre Park, in France

Un pond, stone benches, darkish paths that undulate beneath the bushes… and, right here and there, elegant “follies” borrowed from one other backyard, Jeurre (Essonne) is the conveyor of a curious story of stones. In 1890, Count Henri Dufresne de Saint-Léon (1858-1947), moved by the dismantling of the Méréville park, whose incomparable magnificence was remembered, acquired what remained of the small buildings, true masterpieces. works designed by Hubert Robert for the banker Jean-Joseph de Laborde (1724-1794). Numbered stone by stone, a temple, a tomb, a column take the highway to Jeurre in ox carts. To put down roots in small steps. An journey that may final greater than fifteen years.

Saved from destroy, the well-known temple of Filial Piety lastly finds its place within the middle of an immense meadow bordered by a shaded canal. Under its dome, a replica of the Venus de Canova changed the statue of Nathalie de Laborde, the banker’s daughter. Further on, the banks of the massive pond which faces the citadel welcome the Arcadian facade of the “cleaning dairy” of the previous property. Further nonetheless, Cook’s cenotaph and the rostral column evoking the reminiscence of Laborde’s two sons who disappeared in La Pérouse’s expedition invite meditation. The concord of the entire is such that every part appears to have at all times been there, within the coronary heart of this rural panorama hemmed with forests and marshes with a pleasant spectacle.

Park and chateau of Jeurre, 91150 Morigny-Champigny.