Tivoli is short drive into the hills east of Rome, where natural springs attracted the Romans to build baths and where Hadrian built his expansive villa. The main attraction is a smaller villa, the Villa d'Este, whose terraced water gardens are a UNESCO world heritage site. A pinnacle of High Renaissance garden design, Villa D'Este tumbles down the hillside near the center of the town. The sounds of rushing, splashing, spraying water fill the air, muffling the birdsong, as first one fountain, then another, comes into view.

South of Rome is Ninfa, a medieval village abandoned to malaria and time for hundreds of years, which was resurrected as a romantic garden swooning with roses and calla lilies and irises in the late 19th-century. Near Anzio and the sea, Lavinia Taverna created an inspired and inspiring 20th-century garden in an olive grove at La Landriana. Castel Gandolfo is one of the Castelli Romani situated in the Alban Hills, about 45 minutes southwest of Rome, long the site of villas and palaces built as retreats from the heat of Rome's summers. The hills are covered with vineyards which produce many more than respectable vintages as well as excellent olive oils. Castel Gandolfo itself is a picturesque hideaway overlooking Lake Albano, now perhaps best known as the summer residence of the Popes.

Renaissance gardens at Castello Ruspoli and Villa Lante in the Lazio countryside north of Rome. A Mannerist garden of monsters carved from bedrock at Bomarzo. Civita Castellana, dating back to the Etruscans, nestles in the undulating hills and ancient groves of Sabina, a startlingly beautiful corner of Lazio some 40 miles north of Rome. Ponte Clementino, the 18th century bridge by which the town is approached, gives spectacular, if somewhat vertiginous, views over the river valleys, gorges, cliffs, and old buildings encapsulated into the mountainous landscape surrounding the town.

In 1948 English composer William Walton married the beautiful Argentine Susana Gil. He was 46 and she 22. In 1956 they bought land on Ischia, most of it a stone quarry. Lady Walton later wrote, 'To make an exotic garden out of a lava riverbed needed wild dreams strengthened by blissful ignorance.' The gardens were designed by Russell Page and contain hundreds of rare plant species from around the world. Ischia is a lovely island, with long sandy beaches, hot mineral springs, vineyards covering the slopes of Monte Epomeo, and the poetic ruins of an Aragonese castle.

Pompeii and the beautiful Bay of Naples, where traces of hundreds of gardens have been unearthed. The astonishingly lovely Amalfi Coast, and in Ravello Villa Cimbrone and Villa Rufolo perched high above the sea.

Axel Munthe was born in Sweden in 1857 but spent much of his adult life working as a physician in southern Italy. As a young man he volunteered tirelessly during typhoid and cholera epidemics and earthquake disasters. High up on the rocky ledges of Anacapri, at the foot of Monte Barbarossa, he built a white villa surrounded by a garden. He wrote 'I built it on my knees, like a temple to the Sun, where I would seek knowledge and light from the radiant God whom I had worshipped all my life.'

Sheltered by mountains and tempered by sea breezes, the Sorrentine Peninsula has been abundantly blessed by the gods. Deep gorges radiate down to the sea, wild rocky promontories separate the gorges, all bearing witness to cataclysmic geological events of the distant past. Steep slopes covered with ancient olive trees drop sharply into the sea. Sorrento is a busy resort town with an air of gentility about it and a dramatic setting on a cliff above a small bay, with hills and mountains rising behind. Picturesque narrow streets in the old town, interesting churches and walks through the olive groves in the hills above the town make it a lovely place to stay.