import\Italian-Renaissance-Garden.html indexed_doc HTMLPlugin 1534 Italian-Renaissance-Garden.html Italian-Renaissance-Garden.html en utf8 175E 30 302 3028 175.30282743 37S 80 806 8068 -37.80681071 0.012 Italian Renaissance Garden HTML http://Italian-Renaissance-Garden.html http://Italian-Renaissance-Garden.html HASH018b00860e4aeecd5930e952 1319151048 20111021 1323729580 20111213 HASH018b.dir <p> This is the Italian Renaissance garden; so obviously it comes from the Renaissance period, a rebirth of culture, coming out of the dark ages in Europe, and specifically in Italy where it starts in Florence. So you had a coming together of lots of different historical forces. <p> You had this concentration of extreme wealth firstly, and that was partially because of the Catholic church had its headquarters, and it was taking a lot of money from the rest of Europe. You had an increased scientific knowledge and increased humanistic rationalism coming along, and with that there was a huge opening up of trades. <p> This is quite a big garden by our standards. It is based on this small private side garden of a much, much bigger garden complex in Italy. The Italian merchants were quite wealthy and they spent money on their gardens. At the same time there's an increased interest in antiquity; so part of their Roman heritage and kind of the Roman Empire and so on. So there's a really interesting congruent here between a new rationalistic, scientific view of the world and a Christian catholic view of the world, and a pagan classical view of the world; all that is coming together there. For example, the water feature is a pagan Romulus and Remus statue. <p>