Giardino Giusti

One of the few Italian Renaissance gardens that still has its original structure, and it is legible in a way most are not: geometry and control on the flat, then a cypress avenue running straight up the axis into wooded hillside that gets deliberately wilder as it climbs. The grotesque stone mask halfway up marks the transition. At the top is a belvedere over the whole city.

Visit if you:

• are fascinated by Renaissance design, and how it staged nature against order
• want a garden that is a composition rather than a collection of plants
• like a view earned by climbing rather than by lift
• need somewhere quiet within ten minutes of the centre

Skip it if you:

• are coming for flowers — this is a garden of geometry, stone and evergreen, not of planting
• cannot manage a real hillside; the upper garden is stepped, steep and uneven

This is a privately owned garden, maintained on its admission income after more than four centuries in one family. The ticket is the point -- it is what keeps it.

Keep to the paths and gravel walks. The box parterres are clipped hedging that recovers slowly, and the hillside erodes where people cut corners.

The 2020 storm damage is still being made good and young trees are establishing. Do not climb on terraces, walls or the mascherone.

Do not pick anything, including citrus from the pots.

The garden is small and quiet by design. Coming outside the busiest hours preserves what it is actually for.

The garden charges admission -- higher than most of Verona's church tickets, since it is privately owned and maintained -- and is included in the Verona Card.

It is about a ten-minute walk from Ponte Nuovo or Ponte Pietra, on the same bank as the Roman theatre and easily combined with it.

Opening hours are seasonal, closing earlier in winter. It can close in high wind, given the trees.

Allow an hour, or longer if you climb slowly and sit at the top.

The lower garden is level and accessible. The upper garden, the belvedere and the grottoes are reached by steep steps and rough paths and are not accessible.

There is little shade on the climb; bring water in summer.

April to June is the garden at its best -- everything in leaf and flower, and the climb still comfortable.

Late afternoon gives the best light along the cypress avenue and from the belvedere.

September and October are quieter and still green.

July and August are hot on an exposed limestone hillside; go early if you go then.

Winter is bare but rarely busy, and the structure of a formal garden reads more clearly without its planting.