Italian gardens vary widely according to their historical date and geographic location. This collection of essays approaches Italian gardens of all periods, from the Middle Ages to modern times, and it ranges widely throughout the peninsula, from Genoa to Sicily, the Veneto to Liguria, and Ferrara to Florence. The authors are a distinguished group of Italian, American, English and German scholars, with different backgrounds in art history, literature, architecture, planning and cultural history. Their explorations of the subject from these different perspectives illuminate not only their own disciplines, but are concerned to make many interesting connections between garden art and the politics of nationalism, between the art of gardens and urban infrastructure, between cultural movements like freemasonry and site planning, between design and planting materials.