Parco delle Cascine
Coordinates: 43°46′55.44″N 11°13′5.41″E / 43.7820667°N 11.2181694°E
The Parco delle Cascine (Cascine Park) is a monumental and historical park in the city of Florence. The park covers an area of 160 hectares (395 acres). It has the shape of a long and narrow stripe, on the north bank of the Arno river. It extends from the centre of Florence until the point where the Mugnone flows into the Arno.
The building of the Park began in 1563, under the rule of Cosimo I de' Medici, as a farming and hunting estate of the Medici family, ruling the city of Florence since 1434. The very name of the Park derives from the ancient Italian word "cascio", meaning bovine livestock, mainly intended for the production of butter and cheese.
Since the beginnings of its building, the maintenance of the park was particularly well cared by the Medicis. Rare and exotic plants were chosen for the park, also for scientific reasons.
With the end of rule of the Medici in favour of the Habsburg-Lorraines, the park acquired a recreative function in the urban system, conserved until the present days. However, until the beginning of the 19th century, the park remained usually closed to the public, with the exception of some particular recurrence.
At the end of the 18th century the park was enriched with buildings by the architect Giuseppe Manetti, such as the Palazzina Reale (nowadays location of the Agronomy faculty of the University of Florence), the Abbeveratoio del Quercione fountain, the pyramid-shaped ice house, the amphitheatre and the nautical plant of the Pavoniere. The two neoclassical Pavoniere were originally built as ornamental peacock cages. A number of fountains were built at the time, perhaps the most famous is the Narcisus Fountain, from which the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley draw inspiration writing the Ode to the West Wind, in 1820.
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