Belvedere - View of the garden

Part of the classic Italian garden vocabulary, Diomede placed a walkway along the fortress walls for viewing out across the Val d’Orcia landscape in one direction and then looking down to admire the pattern of the lower garden design in the other. The concept of the Belvedere overlook in Italian gardens goes back to the early Renaissance gardens such as the Belvedere at the Vatican designed by Bramante in 1510. These walkways were conceived as a reversal of the inward looking medieval cloistered gardens in that the outer surrounding landscape is incorporated into the garden scheme.