The national competition the most beautiful in Italy Park, now in its fourteenth edition, presents the ten finalists selected for 2016. During the summer there will be the verdict with the winner. Meanwhile, let's enjoy the beauty of these parks, ideal destinations for a weekend away.

In recent weeks, the scientific committee of the Most Beautiful Park met to decide the " Top Ten" of the Italian scenery in 2016 , and by next summer, including these ten finalists, the two winners will be chosen, respectively, for the category Public Parks and for Parks Private category. This year the choice was difficult. The selected parks, scattered throughout the peninsula , are all spectacularbut each one different: some formal with precise geometries, the most romantic other with soft, sinuous paths, some with exceptional botanical collections or breathtaking panoramic views. 

Waiting to know who will win, the garden lovers can visit with trips a day to the nearby parks, up to realholidays "green" for those more distant , to discover the most beautiful cultural treasures, botanical, natural and architectural.

In Piedmont, the hills of Turin, here is Villa della Regina with its structure typically seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Once you walked the driveway in front of you has the so-called "big rondeau", a double staircase with central fountain of 20 m in diameter. Behind the palace stretches a vast semicircle on three levels. The water that feeds from top to bottom the circuit of ponds and fountains is drawn from various natural springs in the surrounding hills. A culmination of the garden there is a large forest.

Remaining in Piedmont, we meet in Trivero (Biella) Zegna Oasis, a vast mountain area of ​​about 100 square km where, between mid May and late June, you can enjoy the wonderful blooms of rhododendrons, planted from years 40s by Ermenegildo Zegna. A stop not to be missed, in fact, is the stunning Conca rhododendron, crossed by an easy path, renovated by the landscape Florentine Pietro Porcinai and expanded in recent years by Paul Pejrone.

In Lombardy, Lainate (MI) is Villa Borromeo Visconti Litta, a late sixteenth-century garden, updated in the eighteenth and articulated nymph, richly decorated with mosaics, stucco, paintings and water features: a unique masterpiece of its gender. Since 1971, the villa is owned by the City of Lainate who promoted several restoration projects, including the redevelopment of the nineteenth century the orchid greenhouses, just inaugurated.

Overlooking Lake Como, Bellagio, is the Villa Melzi with its charming early nineteenth century landscape garden which worked the architect Luigi Canonica and the agronomist Luigi Villoresi. You breathe a charming romantic atmosphere, with its vegetation of secular and exotic plants, groups of giant rhododendrons and azaleas spread on lawns and along the slopes, the idyllic lake surrounded by Japanese maples that for value and variety, are a unique in the lake Como area.

In Veneto, here is Villa Pisani Bolognesi Scalabrin in Vescovana (Padua) with its formal gardens, designed to be looked at from above: a geometric system fan out of box beds with bulbs and flowers embellished with splendid sculptures. It is an extraordinary achievement desired by a woman, Evelina van Millinghen (who married in 1852 a Pisani), in which the taste of the Victorian joins the tradition of the Italian garden, in a harmonious synthesis between an architectural and the naturalness of the surrounding park.

In Castelfranco Emilia (Modena), we meet Villa Sorra: the most significant example of nineteenth Este, the most romantic garden of informal gardens in Emilia Romagna, with its characteristic canals, the alternation of areas with lawns and shrubbery , bodies of water, the winding paths and false ruins.

We move to Tuscany, Santomato (Pistoia) for Villa Celle, an outstanding example of nineteenth-century romantic park that covers about 30 hectares, the collector Giuliano Gori has turned, since 1970, in an open air museum. Inspired by the presence of some buildings (the aviary, the building of the tea, the Egyptian monument), its formula provides that each artist invited to choose a space and build its intervention specifically for the place at its disposal. The result is a collection of works that do not "occupy" the space but become part of the landscape.

Photo by Emanuele Zallocco

In the Marche we find the Garden Buonaccorsi, in Potenza Picena (Macerata), a precious gem set among the hills. Built between the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, it arranged on a series of terraces with exceptional sculptural ornaments, flower beds with various designs, caves, a theater of automata with hydraulic and mechanical games. In addition to the formal garden terrace, there is a large forest with many trees, an artificial lake and a mound. 

We reach Naples where, on the hill of Vomero, there Floridiana, a complex formed by a large park and a villa that houses the National Museum of Ceramics Martina. The park, with the original outdoor theater, offers a magnificent panorama of the Bay of Naples and is home to over 150 plant species: a real green lung in the heart of the busy district, a great place for a Sunday stroll or for play children, but also a cultural destination for tourists and locals.