Italian Gardens, Hyde Park 1975

Created in the 1860s at the request of Prince Albert for Queen Victoria, these ornamental gardens reflect the royal couple’s fondness for the grand water gardens of the Italian Renaissance, which they had admired during their travels in Europe.

Designed by James Pennethorne, with sculpture by John Thomas, the Italian Gardens were intended to bring a sense of classical beauty and tranquillity to what was then a more naturalistic landscape. The centrepiece is a formal arrangement of four broad pools, each adorned with fountains, stone urns, and statuary. At the eastern edge of the gardens stands an elegant Portland stone loggia, a covered archway that provides a fine vantage point across the pools and onto the Long Water, the western extension of the Serpentine lake.

For well over a century, the Italian Gardens have offered Londoners a place of calm reflection. The Grade II-listed structures — their classical forms softened by trailing plants and the movement of water — remain much as they were first laid out.