The Fresneda in the Escorial
The International Carlo Scarpa Prize for Gardens 1996
edited by Domenico Luciani with Patrizia Boschiero and Luigi Latini
Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche
Treviso 1996
28 pages
33 illustrations in colour and 9 black and white
out of print
The Fresneda is a sequence of ash groves and pastures, artificial lakes, dams and canals, buildings and gardens situated to the south-east of the Monastery of San Lorenzo and the Escorial at the foot of the Sierra of Guadarrama.
Commissioned by Philip II in 1561 as part of an extensive network of hydraulic, environmental and infrastructural transformations stretching from Madrid to the mountain-tops and designed to symbolize his unification and centralization of power.
He employed Dutch hydraulic experts to oversee the creation of the four lakes, the highest and largest of which provides water to the other three lakes and the whole complex through a system of dams and conduits that is still partly in working order.
Contents
Motivazione della giuria
Carmen Añón, La Fresneda e Filippo II
Luis Cervera Vera, Il complesso monastico e cortigiano della Fresneda
Marta Nieto Bedoya, Filippo II committente, soprintendente, paesaggista, geografo
Carmen Añón, La Fresneda come paesaggio culturale
Domenico Luciani, Un luogo, una persona
Cronologia
Bibliografia
