View of the garden

The most influential accomplishment of Tribolo’s last years was the laying out of the Boboli Gardens behind the Pitti Palace in Florence.

The gardens of the Palazzo Pitti were designed on several levels with wild and cultivated vegetation, pools and fountains. They comprise two principal sections, the original one commissioned by Cosimo I de’ Medici. In 1550 Niccolò Tribolo designed the waterworks and the basic lines of the central axis, which extends behind the Palazzo Pitti up to the Forte di Belvedere. After 1560 Bartolomeo Ammanati linked the palace and the garden by a courtyard and ramp. Bernardo Buontalenti created the fanciful tripartite great grotto (Grotto Grande) between 1583 and 1585.

A painting of 1599 by Giusto Utens shows Tribolo’s scheme as originally set out before later additions to the south destroyed the logic of the composition. The symmetrical architectonic layout of the big urban palace was continued into the gardens along an impressive receding central axis.