Giardino Giusti

The Giusti garden lies behind a palace on the left bank of the Adige, a few minutes from the Roman theatre, and it is one of the finest surviving Italian Renaissance gardens.

It was laid out from the 1570s and has the classic structure: a formal lower garden of box parterres on the flat, an avenue of cypresses running straight up the axis, and then a wooded hillside climbing to a belvedere over Verona.

Halfway up, a grotesque stone mask stares down the avenue. It once breathed fire, which tells you most of what you need to know about what this garden was for.

This is a garden of geometry, stone and evergreen rather than of planting, so anyone coming for flowers has misread it. The upper garden is a real hillside — stepped, steep and uneven — and the climb to the belvedere is the point of the design rather than an optional extra, which rules the best of it out for visitors who cannot manage slopes. Admission is also the steepest of Verona's ticketed sites at €14, because the garden is privately owned and maintained.

What is free

Very little, and that is worth knowing before you walk over. The garden is walled: the cypress avenue, the terraces, the grottoes and the belvedere are all inside the ticket, and there is no vantage point from the street.

Admission is €14, reduced to €10 for students, Verona residents, Verona Card holders and groups. It is free for a visitor with a disability who needs a companion and for teachers accompanying a school class.

The boundary is the door on Via Giardino Giusti; everything past the entrance hall is ticketed.

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.

The garden charges €14.00 for a standard ticket — more than most of Verona’s church tickets, since it is privately owned and maintained.

A Verona Card reduces the ticket to €10.00; it does not include it. That is worth knowing before you build a card around the garden, because the difference is the price of walking in versus paying again. Students, groups of fifteen or more and ADSI, FAI and Touring Club members pay the same €10.00, school pupils €6.00, and a disabled visitor with a companion is admitted free.

Check the hours, because the garden publishes two answers. Its opening-hours notice gives daily 10:00–17:00 with last entry at 16:00, while the footer of the same site — and the comune’s monument page — give a seasonal 10:00–18:00 in winter and 09:00–19:00 in summer. All of them agree it opens every day of the year and closes only on 25 December. Ring ahead if your plan depends on a late afternoon.

This garden is built on a hill, and the hill is the point. The flat lower garden of box parterres is level ground off the palace courtyard and holds the formal design, the cypress avenue and the carved stone mask. Everything above it — the wooded slope, the belvedere and the view over Verona — is a climb on garden paths.

Verona’s destination portal puts the limit plainly: only the lower part of the garden can be visited, and the apartments are not accessible — they have no lift. So there is a real visit at the bottom for anyone who cannot manage the top, which is not true of every garden on a slope, and the classic framed view up the cypress avenue is seen from the level part.

A disabled visitor who needs a companion is admitted free. The garden states it in its own ticket table, alongside a standard ticket of €14.00 — so it is a published concession rather than something to negotiate at the gate.

Still not published, and still not guessed: the surface and gradient of the lower paths, and whether the entrance on Via Giardino Giusti has a step. The garden answers on info@giardinogiusti.com and +39 045 803 4029.

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.