Christian L. WrightNOW THAT parks are newly landscaped and trees are starting to blossom, it’s time to zero in on a great garden to visit. But how to narrow the field? Choose an outdoor space with pedigree.
For starters, consider Virginia’s coming Historic Garden Week , when the state unlatches the gate to several notable private houses and gardens. You can visit Monticello, yes, but also Tuckahoe Plantation, Thomas Jefferson’s boyhood home in Richmond, and some 250 other sites .
'To raise towers of living flesh and living bones to the living sky par excellence of our Mediterranean, this was the architecture of Gaudí, inventor of the Mediterranean Gothic destined to shine under the old sun of Greece.' said Salvador Dali about the creation of Antoni Gaudi.
'Park Guell' is one of Barcelona’s most famous landmarks, one of Antoni Gaudi's architectural masterpieces, and a culmination of the outstanding imagination and creativity of Gaudi.
surrounded by the undulating 'Serpentine Bench' with its entire surface encrusted with ceramic shards of all colors, and the fantastic pavilions with curved roofs covered with brightly colored tiles and ornamented spires that look like rising from fairytales,
With the smiling giant Dragon at the entrance stretching in the middle of the colorful stairway on the stairs that lead up the hillside, with the majestic forest of fluted columns, with the vast terrace on the roof providing a magnificent view of the city,
As a matter of fact, Antoni Gaudi built a stunning playground for the imagination of the creative mind.
Antoni Gaudi shaped nature into colonnades, archways and covered galleries with well-masked artificial structures.
With visual jokes, like columns that simulate palm-tree trunks, with rubble-surfaced arches that grow out of the ground, with quilts of ceramic tiles, and outdoor gazebo made of twisted angle iron and shaped as softly curved climbing vines,
At the top of the stairs is the famous Dragon, or Salamander, covered with decorative tile-shard mosaic.
Up the stairs is the sculpture of a trencadís-coated snakehead surrounded by what seems to be “La Senyera”, the flag of Catalonia with an alchemical salamander behind.
86 Doric columns at the top support the plaza above.
With two gatehouses and mushroom-like sporting roofs as tops, the monumental 'Dragon' stairway at the park’s main entrance, leads to a dramatic staircase with symmetrically laid out steps with sculptural features framed by curving walls decorated with multi-colored tiles.
Many of the surfaces are covered in trencadís, with broken pieces of ceramic or glass put together like colorful mosaics.
Anywhere in the park the columns are inclined like palm trees in various shapes, suggesting tree trunks, stalactites and natural coves, and wavy forms, resembling rivers of lava.
To either side there are pavilions that form the porter’s lodge, with very beautiful roofs, built with the traditional Catalan ceramic tiles covered with “trencadís”, a mosaic made of tile fragments.
The wall of the park is made of rustic stone topped with ceramic tiling and medallions bearing the name of 'Park Güell'.
A devout catholic, Antoni Gaudi saw natural forms as instances of divine craftsmanship and he aspired to eliminate the boundary between nature and architecture.
The architectural area has features unique for Antoni Gaudi design, with a blend of winding paths, unusual architectural and sculptural features enhanced by carved forms, decorative stonework, brightly colored mosaics and rich vegetation, with shapes and colors inspired by nature
The nature area preserves the natural vegetation, like in the amazing Mediterranean garden 'Jardí d’Àustria', with beautiful olive trees, pine trees, oak trees, carob trees, holm oaks and broom, laurustinus, magnolias and aromatic plants.
There are two distinct areas in 'Park Güell', nature and architecture.
an unadorned space that integrates the natural landscape into its design, 'Park Güell' is so much more than a park. * It is a symbol of Barcelona, an amazing place where green landscape and great architecture in stone meet.
Set into the hills overlooking Barcelona, with serpentine terraces, seats, galleries and arcades running along the mountainside and adorned with colorful mosaics of broken stone, ceramic pots and old tiles, with a central stairway leading to the main plaza of the 'Greek Theater',
With over hundred years of history, with splendid panoramic views of the city over the sea, 'Park Guell' is one of the most marvelous public parks in the world.
A fairy-tale forest created by architect Antoni Gaudi, 'Park Guell' is an incredible beautiful place where stone, tile, amazing plants and Mediterranean sky magically come to life on a breathtaking landscape that Salvador Dali considered to be 'a precursor of surrealism'.
His amazing talent, outstanding imagination and creativity were enhanced by a deep desire to make Barcelona distinct from Madrid.
No other architect has set his mark so boldly upon a city as Antoni Gaudi did with Barcelona, while advancing the blooming of “La Renaixença”, with a great sense for innovation and inventiveness,
The Explorer Antoni Gaudi created living buildings that breathed and moved and transformed the Catalan modernist movement of architecture at the end of the 19-th century into great art, admired all over the world.
They both created something new and meaningful and different, and their works are famous, fascinating, groundbreaking and timeless, widely recognized around the world.
Antoni Gaudí and Salvador Dalí are two names almost synonymous with art, architecture and painting in Barcelona, both highly representative Catalan artists linked to the 'Art Nouveau” and 'Surrealist' movements at the turn of the 20-th century.
But first and foremost, Barcelona is the city of Gaudi, with 'The Sagrada Familia' Basilica, the most extraordinary personal interpretation of Gothic architecture since the Middle Ages and the world famous 'Park Guëll', designed by Gaudi.
Barcelona's secrets have long inspired great artists, such as Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró.
* As a matter of fact, at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson designed much more than a building. He designed a great architectural construction that spoke and implemented the democratic ideals of the United States.
By helping to introduce classical architecture to the United States, Thomas Jefferson aspired to reinforce the ideals behind the classical past: * democracy, education, free thinking and civic responsibility, and the symbolic nature of architecture.
Thomas Jefferson grew hundreds of varieties of fruits and vegetables at Monticello, using cultivation techniques that were really revolutionary for his time. And so he became America’s first serious viticulturist and a precursor of sustainable agriculture.
Every year at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson kept a log of the Gardens flora, as well as the insects and diseases that affected them, in the 'Garden Book'.
The beautiful 'Gardens of Monticello' were a botanic showpiece, a source of food, and an experimental laboratory housing ornamental and useful plants from around the world, which Thomas Jefferson, a passionate horticulturist, designed, maintained and monitored.
Thomas Jefferson also designed the 'Gardens of Monticello'. His landscape plans included both ornamental and vegetable gardens, two orchards, a vineyard, and an 18-acre ornamental forest.
As a matter of fact, the 'Monticello House' is a great example of French Neoclassical architecture in the United States.
He thought that the goals and aspirations of architecture were 'to teach, to delight and to move.' So Thomas Jefferson fully integrated the ideals of French neoclassical architecture into American architecture.
Thomas Jefferson believed that art was a powerful tool that could generate social change, could inspire the public to seek education, and could bring about a general sense of Enlightenment for the American public.
Although the octagonal drum and the dome shaped like a circle provide a sense of verticality, the wooden balustrade circling the roofline provides a sense of horizontality.
The two-column portico contains Doric columns that support a triangular pediment decorated by a semicircular window.
The early construction looked as a Palladian two-story pavilion. The later remodeling, based in part on the architecture of 'Hôtel de Salm' in Paris looks like a single-story brick home under a Doric entablature.
In his later construction period, Thomas Jefferson fundamentally changed the proportions of Monticello.
The structured columns of 'Monticello House' are similar to the columns of buildings in the ancient Rome.
'Monticello House' is built in Roman Neoclassicism style, with inspiration from the classical art and architecture of ancient Rome.
The facade of Monticello - with its four classical columns - was essentially an exercise in the use of these aspirations.
Thomas Jefferson rejected the architectural traditions established in Virginia, determined to return at Monticello to an application of Roman and Greek architecture.
When a visitor remarked that the work is incomplete, Thomas Jefferson replied: 'And so I hope it will remain during my life, as architecture is my delight, and putting up, and pulling down, is one of my favorite amusements.'
As a matter of fact, Monticello is the autobiographical art piece of Thomas Jefferson, one of a kind, started in 1768, designed and redesigned and built and rebuilt for more than 40 years.
More than any other home in the United States, Monticello accurately reflects the passionate personality of its Explorer owner.
Thomas Jefferson created at Monticello one of America’s most iconic and historically meaningful architectural masterpieces.
Thomas Jefferson was a self-taught architect whose knowledge of different types of art came from books and observation.
Today the University of Virginia's campus is one of the most beautiful college campuses in America.
And the most ambitious of these original buildings, the 'Rotunda', designed by Thomas Jefferson on the model of the Roman 'Pantheon' was used as a library.
Designed as an 'academical village' in which students and professors would live, learn, and teach in community, the buildings were planned not only as housing for students and professors, but also as models of architecture.
Along with his autobiographical masterpiece Monticello, designed and redesigned and built and rebuilt for more than 40 years, Thomas Jefferson the architect is best known for his design and plans for the University of Virginia.
Without no formal education and training in architecture, he read extensively about ancient Rome and the Italian Renaissance architecture and would become a talented architect whose designs included the 'Virginia State Capitol' and the main buildings of University of Virginia.
Thomas Jefferson was a great self-made architect who designed the blueprints for his own Neoclassical-style estate, including the outbuildings, gardens and grounds of Monticello.
Thomas Jefferson advocated for free public education and thought that universities should educate leaders, and not just preachers and professors.
Thomas Jefferson established the military academy at West Point that adopted a progressive system of learning and significantly contributed to the development of mathematical research.
Thomas Jefferson had extraordinary accomplishments in mathematics, raising math in the curriculum of the University of Virginia to heights not seen at any other college in the United States at the time.
whose passions ranged from political philosophy, archaeology and linguistics to music, botany and bird watching.
A Founding Father and the third President of the United States, the author of the 'Declaration of Independence' and the founder of the University of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson was a true Renaissance man, a multi-disciplinary mathematician and lawyer,