Historic Park Old Villa

The Old Villa is a Historic Park born on the site of a garden dating back to 1600 annexed to the former monastery of Santa Maria di Costantinopoli in the city of Cosenza.

It is a communal garden that extends up to the slopes of the Guarassano hill and the underlying district of the Spirito Santo, in an area of ??about 30,000 square meters in Piazza XV Marzo, in the historic center of the city. Located near the Government Palace, seat of the Province, it has several entrances and is arranged on an altitude profile between 275 and 240 meters above sea level. The monumental entrance is located on Via Petrarca flanked by the stairway leading to the gardens, while the main entrance opens onto the space in front of the Alfonso Rendano Theater, the only traditional theater in the Calabria region, renovated in 2002-2003.

The space of the villa arranged on several levels with terracing develops around viale Guicciardi, an axis built in 1870, which is highlighted by a double row of holm oaks in the initial section and by a series of plane trees in the terminal section.

The other tree species present are acacias, poplars, oaks, palms and horse chestnuts. Over the centuries the structural system has undergone several extensions and rearrangements.

In 1878 the municipality of Cosenza approved one of the first restyling interventions with the creation of a circular area originally intended to be an amphitheater which was followed at the beginning of the twentieth century by the introduction of the gazebo and the inauguration of the Venus basin. In 1932 the monumental entrance to via Petrarca was introduced and a general reinterpretation of the tree-lined part of the lower area of ??the villa.

Among the monuments present at the entrance there is the Monument to the martyrs or Italy Statue erected in Piazza XV Marzo in 1878 in honor of the protagonists of the Risorgimento uprisings of 1844, by the will of the sculptor Giuseppe Pacchioni, one of the survivors of the group of the Bandiera Brothers.

The white marble statue holds the collected flag with the left arm and with the right hand (mutilated) and its head is encircled by a laurel wreath that symbolizes free Italy. The plaque on the pedestal bears an inscription by Giosuè Carducci with the names of the patriots from Cosenza who fought on 15 March 1844 in the uprisings and of the Bandiera Brothers shot together with 7 comrades on 25 July 1844.

Some cultural events of the municipality take place in the villa.

Map: Historic Park Old Villa