Before restoration

The Royal Gardens have progressively deteriorated. Their original design is now barely legible, in terms both of geometrical patterns and the placement of trees and shrubs. Lorenzo Santi’s neoclassical pavilion and the nineteenth-century pergola are in ruins, the historic drawbridge unusable, railings and street furniture rusted and crumbling.
All these factors have obscured the historic, urban, social and landscape significance of the gardens.
Now isolated from the rest of the Marciana area, of which they were once an integral part, they are rapidly becoming derelict. Despite this, over the course of time, the Royal Gardens have remained one of the places most loved by Venetians.