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The monastic complex founded in the fourteenth century was completed and embellished until the sixteenth century, although other valuable works continued until the eighteenth century and beyond. Like any other monumental complex, the Certosa of Florence has also been the subject of ups and downs throughout its long history, which have seen periods of prosperity alternate with phases when it was partially abandoned.
Overall, the landscape concept aims to recover the historical road network and restore the activities that historically characterized some spaces, in order to enhance the storytelling of the evolution of the complex. This extends over the entire hill at the foot of the monastery, and is characterized by different areas.
The large cloister is considered the heart of the monastery because it was the center of monastic life. Over the centuries it has often changed its face (garden, orchard, cemetery, laundry, lawn) but the quadripartite space, which recalls the concept of the earthly paradise expressed in the Bible, has always remained unchanged, constituting in fact an important element of monastic architecture. It was therefore decided to preserve this design by inserting new boxwood plants, maintaining the cemetery and allocating two portions of the cloister to lawn, one with lavender and one as an orchard, in order to retrace the historical evolution of this space.
The historic olive grove, following a period of abandonment, is re-evaluated by inserting new plants based on the design of the original layout. In the past, the almond-olive intercropping was a very widespread practice, but today it is very rare due to the out-of-phase production cycles. Here it is re-proposed as a landscape recovery of the hill thanks to the suggestive late-winter flowering of the almond trees surrounded by olive trees.
The paths inside the woods and in the fields reproduce the historical ones visible in the eighteenth-century plans. On the north-west side, near the Greve river, the vegetable gardens are also re-proposed.
