THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY AND EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY GARDEN

The fortunes of the garden in the seventeenth century - a period of reduced political and economic importance for the Doria family - are not well documented.

An important occurrence, even if of negative consequences for the palace, was the construction by the Republic of the sea walls in the 1630s, which interrupted the palace’s direct access to its quay.

The walls came between the monumental complex and the sea in front of it, impeding the direct prospect onto the sea from the loggia which ended the south garden. The vehement protests expressed by Prince Giovanni Andrea II in a letter to the Senate of the Republic were in vain.

Between the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth the sculptures of the garden were renewed and enriched with additional ones.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century is documented the presence of two four-lobed fish tanks parallel to the monumental Fountain of Neptune.

The tanks, slightly lengthened longitudinally, acted as ponds, enlivened at the centre with a jet of water. They served to emphasize the central axis of the gardens, at the expense of the importance originally given to the fountains of the seasons.

This led to the creation of rectangular themes typical of the Baroque garden, substituting the square ones characteristic of Renaissance gardens.

This initiative is already visible in the plans for the central part by Giovan Battista Parodi and is emphasized in the design for two parterres de broderie put forward by Pietro de Cotte in 1753, in which are visible two squares next to the central fountain, disposed in such a way as to seem a single rectangular compartment.

Probably the design of De Cotte was never carried out to the letter, but certainly at the end of the eighteenth century the garden had been transformed according to the principles of French Baroque gardens, as can be observed in the detailed relief by Ingegner G. Brusco (1796).