Vatican Museums

Paul III Farnese (1534-1549), in addition to completing Bramante's Cortile del Belvedere and renovating part of the Vatican Gardens, commissioned the creation of a large secret garden to the west, in the area now in front of the Vatican Pinacoteca. A fresco inside Castel Sant'Angelo, painted by Prospero Fontana in 1545, shows this garden surrounded by a high wall. A few decades later, in 1574, it was depicted in a map by Mario Cartaro (1574) with the name “Secret Garden of Pope Paul III”.

The architect Jacopo Meleghino (c. 1480-1549) from Ferrara, was commissioned to carry out the work. He levelled a large area of land measuring 90 x 130 metres and, inspired by the Renaissance secret gardens, enclosed the space with high walls covered with espaliers of citrus trees, bittersweet, lemon and citron trees, placing a large entrance gate on each side. Inside, the garden was divided into four flowerbeds intersected by avenues covered with pergolas, as shown in a print from 1565. In the following century, Pope Clement X Altieri (1670-1676) had the garden enlarged and made square, justifying the new name of the area as we know it today.

In the time of Pope Gregory XVI Cappellari (1831-1845), the Square Garden was divided into four large flowerbeds, each subdivided into four sections, with a monumental fountain at the centre, composed of a circular basin supported by a high plinth decorated with the symbols of the papal coat of arms and a grey Bigio marble basin. Originally located in the Courtyard of the Pinecone, the fountain was removed in 1835 to make way for the base of the Antonine Column. Other smaller fountains were distributed within the parterres and along the walls of the enclosure.