Hello, DU! Your Friday Afternoon Challenge today: “Poetics of Place: the European Gardens of
pleasure, fantasy and glory!”
Surely you know them.
And, of course, we play fair here...
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= new reply since forum marked as read
The summer palace of the Austrian Emperor, Franz Joseph.
I was there as a child, and remember sore feet and parquet floors that don't look flat.
Enjoyed it so much as an adult, that I got the Franz Joseph chops for a while:
The dozen or so times I've been over my sole interest has been women and banjos. 
Not to worry. Park Crescent has got the eastern edge of Regents Park more or less opposite but not that uninterupted expanse of grass. 
You should have gone with where that Dutch guy lived
Last edited Sat Nov 9, 2013, 05:21 PM - Edit history (1)
It combined the collection owned by the MFA and the one from the Brooklyn Museum. He did a series at the Boboli. These gardens are next to the Pitti Palace in Florence (but across the river in the Oltrarno section). It's a nice section described well here: http://www.fodors.com/world/europe/italy/florence/the-oltrarno/
If you go there, be sure to stop at the Santa Maria del Carmine and see the Brancacci Chapel for its fabulous fresco of masterpieces by Masaccio, Masolino and Lippi. Expulsion from the Garden is here
By Augustus Mayhew
Keeping up with other European aristocrats took little effort for Italian royals like the Borromeo family whose more-is-more interpretation of a formal Italian garden on the family-owned island of Isola Bella has served for centuries as Lake Maggiore’s most prominent attraction. Isola Bella’s operatic-scaled gardens are spread across ten terraces that form a pyramid ornamented with balustrades, hedges, obelisks and statues.
Whether inspired by the Gothic spires of the nearby Duomo of Milan or obsessed to formulate an imaginative pyramidal Italian version of Versailles, the Borromeo family’s island showcases, Isola Bella and Isola Madre, make for Lake Maggiore’s unrivaled architectural and botanical wonders. Isola Bella’s grandiose palazzo and over-the-top gardens are in stark contrast with the more reserved Isola Madre, an Arcadian showcase for some of Europe’s most extraordinary species of trees, flowers and shrubs where for the past several centuries its magnolias, myrtles and rhododendrons have all ‘exceeded their maximum growth.” While Lake Como’s shoreline of splendid classic villas and gardens express a more conservative Italian tradition, the Borromeo’s ambitious tour de force, a 17th and 18th century-styled Hearst Castle of sorts with Alice-in-Wonderland gardens, still captures the Baroque era’s insatiable preference for folly.
http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/node/1906443
Live and learn! And I do learn a lot from your Challenges. Both about the works, artists and places you include and about tangential things that I stumble onto along the way.
I try to resist getting distracted from the hunt, but sometimes I can't help it. In searches for this Challenge I came upon an image of a sculpture that had once been displayed at a Dublin hotel. Off I went, and learned that the work was by J. Seward Johnson, the same artist who did The Awakening, which I'd visited a number of times when it was at Haines Point in D.C.
The Awakening...
After 27 Years, a Popular Sculpture Moves From a National Park Into Private Hands
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/29/arts/design/29awak.html?_r=0
Between Appointments, the Johnson sculpture that was displayed in Dublin...
http://travelingwithsweeney.com/2013/10/25/thousand-welcomes-four-seasons-dublin/
You won't believe what else I found, and where!
Time to Wake Up, Pal…
By: govchristie
Aug 07 2012
Governor Chris Christie checks out the statue “Between Appointments” located on the grounds of Drumthwacket in Princeton. Gloria and Herbert Glatt donated the life scale bronze sculpture created by Seward Johnson to the Drumthwacket Foundation in 2010. It was originally cast in 1986 in a limited edition of seven.
http://njgovchristie.wordpress.com/2012/08/07/time-to-wake-up-pal/
Folks will be kicking themselves when they find out where it is...
it resembles because of its crescent shape. Well, a big "duh" on ME! 
and it resembled another important crescent building. The Germans may have perceived crescent buildings as significant targets. To wit, the I.G. Farben Building:
I've been in both buildings.
That's interesting...
Park Crescent was bombed, too? Maybe my cheesy theory has merit.
At Versailles.
I had looked this morning, as I sometimes check for the Sat. AM Challenge orphans.
I'd convinced myself it was Georgian and in the UK, partly because of the style of the park bench. You could do several Friday Challenges on park benches alone, as each culture and period **tends** to have a distinctive style and material.
Being wrong, many searches led to many tangents...until your last clue.
