Giardino dell'Orticoltura, Florence

Giardino dell'Orticoltura is a public garden whose most remarkable feature is the great tepidarium, a glass-and-iron conservatory created for a national horticultural exhibition. Its design came from the engineer and architect Giacomo Roster, and the structure was built by the Michelucci workshops of Pistoia, using cast-iron columns from the Lorenzetti foundry. Look at the long rectangular framework: it measures 38.50 by 17 metres and covers about 650 square metres.

The conservatory contains 9,700 assembled pieces and eight tonnes of rolled iron. Inside, heated by stoves, it once held pools set into niches decorated with porous rock, made by Florentine carver Francesco Marini. Opened on the nineteenth of May 1880, it was praised as a crystal palace. After wartime damage and years of neglect, the tepidarium was restored in 2000 and now hosts cultural activities and events.