Villa Comunale & Public Garden in Taormina

Taormina presents the visitors the occasion to closely observe floral beauties and exotic trees, so the characteristic of distant lands, but also typical species from the Mediterranean basin, like the olive, the carob tree or the domestic pine. The Giovanni Colonna Duke of Cesarò park, planned and commissioned by the English noblewoman Florence Trevelyan between 1890 and 1899, is a paradise of biodiversity for both admires of botany and the occasional visitor, a stimulus for discovery of the charm of the plant universe. Many different varieties of the species coming from the five continents.

Inspired by the English trend , lady Trevelyan , directed the work of the park with a taste for the exotic and the original. The fanciful pavilions she wished to make in order to observe the migratory and sedentary birds, that she loved and studied. The beehives, so called for the organization terraced layers and arches that make them resemble pagodas, are today used as viewing places, inserted harmoniously in the luxurious and a little chaotic setting of the English garden.

In such a conception of the open space, based on the juxtaposition and alternating of natural elements with artificial ones (bowers, pagodas, bushes, knolls, trees), anyone going for a walk discovers a place in which nature, albeit appearing wild, is never uncultivated.