ZANOBI DEL ROSSO

The Kaffeehaus is one of the most interesting buildings inside the Boboli Gardens and is also one of the works carried out at the wishes of Grand Duke Peter Leopold of Lorraine, between 1774 and 1785. Work on the “new house under the fortress”, as it was initially called, began in 1774, from designs by Zanobi del Rosso. In the first part of 1775, the new building was completed and ready to be used as a resting place, in which the court could enjoy a hot chocolate drink during its walks.

The building is an airy pavilion, circular in shape and with an onion-shaped dome top. It is divided over three separate levels, beautifully inserted in a complex of small gardens and orchards. The interior is divided over four main levels and side mezzanine floors with triangular stairs. Between 1775 and 1776, the interiors were decorated on the main floor by three artists who were well known in Florence at the time: Giuseppe del Moro, Giuliano Traballesi, and Pasquale Micheli.

The perfection of the building lies in its exquisite, carefully applied detailing. This includes the small triangular stairway inside that takes the visitor through the whole Kaffeehaus, from the ground floor to the belvedere with dome top, or the insides of the doors and windows in the painted room on the first floor, harmoniously blended with the background colour of the paintings. A good deal of elegance has been incorporated into the terracotta flooring in rectangular and hexagonal tiling with blocks of white marble and a double ring in white marble around the edge. With its rounded forms, the multilinear roof like a turret, known in the city as the “Chinese pavilion”, is an example of completely new architecture on the late 18th-century panorama of Florence. It is quite similar to the structures of some Viennese palaces, characterised by evident similarities to the ottoman tents, the so-called “turqueries”.

The Kaffeehaus is one of the most interesting buildings inside the Boboli Gardens and is also one of the works carried out at the wishes of Grand Duke Peter Leopold of Lorraine, between 1774 and 1785. Work on the “new house under the fortress”, as it was initially called, began in 1774, from designs by Zanobi del Rosso. In the first part of 1775, the new building was completed and ready to be used as a resting place, in which the court could enjoy a hot chocolate drink during its walks.

The building is an airy pavilion, circular in shape and with an onion-shaped dome top. It is divided over three separate levels, beautifully inserted in a complex of small gardens and orchards. The interior is divided over four main levels and side mezzanine floors with triangular stairs. Between 1775 and 1776, the interiors were decorated on the main floor by three artists who were well known in Florence at the time: Giuseppe del Moro, Giuliano Traballesi, and Pasquale Micheli.

The perfection of the building lies in its exquisite, carefully applied detailing. This includes the small triangular stairway inside that takes the visitor through the whole Kaffeehaus, from the ground floor to the belvedere with dome top, or the insides of the doors and windows in the painted room on the first floor, harmoniously blended with the background colour of the paintings. A good deal of elegance has been incorporated into the terracotta flooring in rectangular and hexagonal tiling with blocks of white marble and a double ring in white marble around the edge. With its rounded forms, the multilinear roof like a turret, known in the city as the “Chinese pavilion”, is an example of completely new architecture on the late 18th-century panorama of Florence. It is quite similar to the structures of some Viennese palaces, characterised by evident similarities to the ottoman tents, the so-called “turqueries”.

The Kaffeehaus is one of the most interesting buildings inside the Boboli Gardens and is also one of the works carried out at the wishes of Grand Duke Peter Leopold of Lorraine, between 1774 and 1785. Work on the “new house under the fortress”, as it was initially called, began in 1774, from designs by Zanobi del Rosso. In the first part of 1775, the new building was completed and ready to be used as a resting place, in which the court could enjoy a hot chocolate drink during its walks.

The building is an airy pavilion, circular in shape and with an onion-shaped dome top. It is divided over three separate levels, beautifully inserted in a complex of small gardens and orchards. The interior is divided over four main levels and side mezzanine floors with triangular stairs. Between 1775 and 1776, the interiors were decorated on the main floor by three artists who were well known in Florence at the time: Giuseppe del Moro, Giuliano Traballesi, and Pasquale Micheli.

The perfection of the building lies in its exquisite, carefully applied detailing. This includes the small triangular stairway inside that takes the visitor through the whole Kaffeehaus, from the ground floor to the belvedere with dome top, or the insides of the doors and windows in the painted room on the first floor, harmoniously blended with the background colour of the paintings. A good deal of elegance has been incorporated into the terracotta flooring in rectangular and hexagonal tiling with blocks of white marble and a double ring in white marble around the edge. With its rounded forms, the multilinear roof like a turret, known in the city as the “Chinese pavilion”, is an example of completely new architecture on the late 18th-century panorama of Florence. It is quite similar to the structures of some Viennese palaces, characterised by evident similarities to the ottoman tents, the so-called “turqueries”.

The Lemon House was built between 1777 and 1778, after a design by Zanobi del Rosso in the location of the former Menagerie erected by Grand Duke Cosimo III de’ Medici in 1677 and dismantled by Grand Duke Peter Leopold Habsburg-Lorraine in 1776, when the animals were transferred to the Menagerie of the Belvedere in Vienna. The construction of the Lemon House became necessary to provide enough winter shelter for the collection of citrus trees displayed throughout the gardens.

Still used to house around some 500 citrus plants, the Lemon House faces south and measures 106 by 8 meters. The fa�ade is punctuated with pilaster strips and features a regular repetitive structure of four spans, each formed of four large windows topped by four smaller framed windows. The succession is interrupted by three identical portals crowned with garlands decorated with fruits; in its upper part, the fa�ade is closed off by a long carved cornice. The symmetrical surfaces between the pilaster strips are decorated in Lorraine green. Inside, two long walls of different heights enable citruses to benefit from the sunlight without getting in the way of one other. The left side of the Lemon House was enlarged in 1816 by Giuseppe Cacialli to create a space equal in width to two windows. Cacialli was also entrusted with the Neoclassical design of the fa�ades of the two wings, which form the edge of the garden to the right and left.

The area shown in the photo is part of the gardens overlooking the Kaffeehaus and were set out in the 1770s on occasion of the small building, when the area underwent significant changes to adapt it to the design of the new building. The operation reflected the wishes of Grand Duke of Tuscany, Peter Leopold, who wanted to rearrange the uncultivated and woody areas into new architecturally ordered spaces, using a new system for exhibiting the antique and renaissance sculptures. An engraving by Aniello Lamberti (1783), the View of the Kaffeehaus in the Royal Boboli Gardens (now in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze), shows the way in which the space was transformed into a grass-laid garden with hedgerows, set out to limit pathways; the hill is designed with symmetrical stairways and terraces with vines alternated with fruit trees.

As a composition linchpin for the whole area, the new Ganymede Fountain was placed on the lawns further downhill. The fountain consists of an oval basin with white marble bow beneath the 16th-century marble group of Ganymede atop an Eagle, a work attributed to the sculptor Giovanni Battista Lorenzi.

The geometric structure has remained unchanged and only today it appears to be greatly simplified: the grating fences have disappeared, along with the vines and many of the hedges.