One doesn’t have to travel to Italy to stroll through an Italian Renaissance Cultural Garden. All one has to do is drive along East Boulevard on the East side of Cleveland, Ohio, park along the road, and stroll leisurely through the upper and lower garden. Or spend a romantic evening under the stars listening to Italian opera. Do not be mistaken the Italian Renaissance Cultural Garden isn’t just plants and flowers. It is Cleveland’s monument to Italy, highlighting famous Italian cultural figures in the arts and sciences, as well as historical figures. It is the only cultural Renaissance garden in the United States.
The Italian Cultural Garden is one of 30 established gardens with six more in the planning stage that represent the different countries of the world. Paul Burik serves as President of the Cleveland Cultural Garden Federation.
The Italian Renaissance Cultural Garden started out as the vision of Philip J. Garbo, an Italian American businessman born in Sicily. Garbo was the president of the first Italian Cultural Garden Association. He spent 10 years conceiving and creating this cultural monument to Italy in the form of a Renaissance garden. Garbo was able to secure WPA funds from the federal government, money from the City of Cleveland, as well as donating his own money to make a dream become a reality. The cost of the completion of the gardens was well over $100,000. A man of vision, Garbo wanted to build a small Pantheon-like structure with the names of famous Italian men and women. Unfortunately, the money ran out. Garbo was 82-years-old when he died in 1967.
Cleveland’s Italian Renaissance Cultural Garden was formally opened on October 12, 1930, celebrating both Columbus Day as well as the 2,000th anniversary of the birth of the Roman poet, Virgil. The garden was dedicated “as a symbol of the contribution of Italian culture to American democracy.”
An exquisite bronze bust of Virgil was a gift, sent from the Italian government to grace the garden. In 1932, the Italian government also sent a large block of stone from Monte Grappa in Northern Italy. The Battle of Monte Grappa is considered one of the greatest unsung battles of World War I. The stone was placed in the garden to commemorate Cleveland’s Italian war veterans who fought in World War I.
The Garden is displayed on two levels. It is designed in the way of a Renaissance garden with large walkways. The upper level consists of a large, Renaissance fountain modeled after the famous fountain in the Villa Medici in Rome with two spiral staircases leading down to the lower level piazza amphitheater.
The lower garden is designed from a fountain in Villa d’Este in Tivoli, the famed water and wind garden. A tall wall Renaissance fountain graces the area with the faces of famous Italians: Michelangelo, painter; Giotto, painter and architect; Petrarca, humanist; Verdi, composer; Da Vinci, artist, scientist, inventor, and Marconi, Nobel Prize winner and inventor.
Gino Colage, a retired man in his 80s tried to keep up with the maintenance of the garden. He worked for over 10 years weeding, tending, and sweeping the area to make sure it was presentable for weddings. Colage met Joyce Mariani through friends, and kept extending an invitation to visit the Italian Garden. Mariani, who moved from Rome to Cleveland, and still has an apartment there, finally accepted Colage’s invitation. Mariani expected to see a “flower garden.” Instead, she stood in wonder and astonishment surrounded by the Renaissance Cultural Garden.
Through research, Mariani realized that it was intended as a cultural monument. Having lived in Italy, Mariani knows the importance of gardens in the everyday life of Italians. Seeing structural work that needed urgent restoration led Mariani to form the non-profit Italian Cultural Garden Foundation. She became its Executive Director to undertake the $750,000 Renaissance Restoration Project to restore the garden back to the glory years of the 1930s, and complete the features Garbo had planned for the cultural monument. Mariani considers herself “the tool” in all of her work for the Italian Renaissance Cultural Garden. She says, “Colage is her right hand, and to this day he helps me with many things.”
Mariani began her own networking for the money for the garden by seeking out Italian Americans in Cleveland who appreciated Italy’s culture. She founded the Cleveland Italian Film Festival as a community wide cultural endeavor in 2006. A few months later when Mariani took upon the restoration of the Italian Cultural Garden, she gave up her salary and decided to put all the film festival profits into funding the large restoration. Mariani now finds herself working seven days a week, raising money, researching the historical garden, and keeping archives of the restoration project.
In 2008, Frank Jackson, the Mayor of Cleveland, presented Mariani with the Italian Heritage Award. The award was for her reeducation of the public about the historical importance of the Italian Cultural Garden as Cleveland’s only monument to Italy and as founding Director of the Cleveland Italian Film Festival.
The Cultural Garden, which is the most widely used of any of the other cultural gardens by the public, is the backdrop for weddings. Along with this, operas have been revived for the first time in 65 years in the garden. This past July 2012, 1,580 people attended the annual free concert. Many who attended the concert brought along picnics to enjoy the music of well know Italian operas.
The cost of the Renaissance Restoration Project is currently up to $750,000. So far, $460,000 has been poured into the restoration in the form of donations, grants and donated work. Money has been spent restoring the large Renaissance fountains, with comprehensive lighting of 19 historic lampposts on both the upper and lower level of the garden, and the restoration of two winding staircases, which connect the upper and lower garden, and additional seating.
A stone balustrade was installed with a bronze plaque honoring, Philip J. Garbo, “The Creator of the Italian Garden,” a pink granite bust of Virgil, and a bronze plaque reading, “This Garden Is A Symbol Of The Contribution of Italian Culture To American Democracy.”
In June, 2012, a $130,000 new bronze statue of Dante Alighieri, one of the giants of western literature and the author of the Divine Comedy will be dedicated which was part of the original design and never completed. The cast base will include figures from the Divine Comedy. The internationally acclaimed sculptor, Sandra Bonaiuto, of Cleveland, who has his work in the Vatican, will create this monumental work.
The interest in the garden isn’t just from local Clevelanders. There have been a number of generous anonymous donors from within Cleveland, as well from others who live outside the city. Over 3,000 flower bulbs of crocus, daffodils and tulips were donated from as far away as California, from Anthony Gazzuolo, owner of a garden center who read about the restoration.
Both Garbo and Mariani shared the dream of an outdoor museum area honoring famous Italian men and women. The concept is to expand the outdoor museum, with a Pantheon type structure which will honor famous Italian cultural figures, Nobel Prize winners, and those in the fields of medicine, science, math, architecture, physics, and the arts. Their names will be etched on bronze plaques on small granite columns, to be situated in groups around the garden. Other names will be placed on plaques on the Pantheon structure, that Garbo envisioned. Some of the names will include: Galileo, the father of modern science; Maria Montessori, Italian physician and educator; Rita Levi-Montalcini, Noble Prize winner in medicine; Donatello, sculptor; Franco Modigliani, Nobel Prize winner in Economics; Federico Fellini, film director; Umberto Eco, Nobel Prize writer; Leonardo Pisano Fibonacci, mathematician. These are just a few of the famous Italian men and women, past and present that will be included among many others.
The next phase will begin the formal Renaissance planting design of the garden designed by Ann Rosmarin, a formal landscape designer from Cleveland. There will also be the installation of a small fountain for the upper garden that Mariani found in old drawings.
Garbo started the work almost 80 years ago that Mariani now continues. As kindred spirits they both encountered opposition but were able to carry on with their mission to see that The Italian Renaissance Cultural Garden became a viable reality and a formally little used public space is now filled with events for the public. This cultural monument to Italy can be enjoyed not only by the Italian community in Cleveland but also by anyone who strolls along the sandstone walkways, or those who say their wedding vows with Dante nearby, surrounded by the beauty of a Renaissance garden under Virgil’s poetic gaze, or enjoying the beauty of opera sung under the stars.
Cleveland can be proud of its Italian Renaissance Cultural Garden. But more so, Italians can be proud of this fine treasure and applaud the likes of Garbo for his dream that became a reality and to Mariani for her contribution in restoring that dream back to its glory days. The Italian Cultural Garden is not only Cleveland’s monument to Italy but it is also a symbol of the contribution of Italian culture to American democracy.
Mariani’s devotion and passion sums up her feelings for this cultural monument. “This space reflects the vast culture of Italian intellect, refinement and feeling for beauty by embracing the grand influence by which Italy had changed the world.”
