Enhancement of Villa Ada

Programs to enhance the identity of places: parks and historic gardens (Mission 1, Component 3, Investment 2.3)

Italy’s Recovery and Resilience Plan provides for countering urban decline and restoring shared identities of places, creating new opportunities to revive local economies and mitigate the impact of the crisis and to enhance skills for the management and maintenance of historic parks and gardens.

The investment envisages a refurbishment of historic parks and gardens and puts in place extensive knowledge and rehabilitation of Italian historic parks and gardens with a view to their proper maintenance, management and public use.

Resources will be allocated for the regeneration of these sites and the training of local staff who may treat/preserve them over time. Beyond the cultural and historical value, gardens and historic parks contribute to enhancing environmental values and play an important role in preserving conservation, oxygen generation, reduction of environmental pollution and noise, and microclimate regulation.

The investment is financed by Italy’s Recovery and Resilience plan by EUR 300 million.

The project “Enhancement of Villa Ada” is part of this investment.
Villa Ada is a large urban park, a place of high complexity if we consider its history, the natural environments that coexist there and the social value that it has for the city today.

It is the result of a series of stratifications, aggregations and interventions both on the landscape and on the architectural artefacts that began in the second half of the eighteenth century and is still ongoing.

With its almost 160 hectares of extension, of which at least 80 consist of wooded areas, it constitutes the main green lung of the northern part of the city and is one of the largest historic Villas present in the territory of Rome Capital.

Today this place is a large container of precious historical findings, a large park adorned with neoclassical and eclectic buildings such as Tempio di Flora, Villa Polissena, Scuderie Reali, Casa dei giochi, Torre Gotica. It is also characterized by holm oak woods, cork oaks, pine forests and lawns, according to the traditional landscape configuration of the English garden.

Within its borders we find play areas for children, an equestrian center, a kindergarten and the Egyptian Embassy.

Starting from an in-depth landscape, archaeological and historical analysis, the critical issues and emergencies have been identified, which the project aims to resolve by looking to the future in a far-sighted manner through a program of interventions aimed at preserving the great landscape and the heritage of the Park.

This project on the Villa Ada Park is therefore part of a broader program of redevelopment interventions and includes:

• forest improvement interventions aimed at the structural and compositional diversification of the forest and its continuity over time;
• conservative interventions but also replacement with resistant species;
• conservative interventions but also replacement with new tree specimens;
• monitoring and management of isolated trees outside the wooded area with particular attention to those of landscape value;
• interventions aimed at maintaining vegetation attracting avifauna, safeguarding habitats and specific refuge sites for fauna, integrating vegetation cover with new tree and shrub specimens;
• restoration and strengthening of pedestrian and vehicular paths serving Park users (but also of service vehicles for implementing the interventions);
• extensive interventions on the hydrogeological functionality of vegetation covers but also intensive interventions in specific areas in degradation, with the application of naturalistic engineering techniques compatible with the context;
• reuse of materials deriving from maintenance operations of the forestry component (pruning waste, wood resulting from silvicultural operations, etc.) for hydrogeological protection operations (naturalistic engineering works) and urban greenery (for example woody chips for mulching new systems, possible energy valorisation of biomass, etc.);
• redevelopment of the main avenue system with its canal and the rediscovery of the lost lake, recalling its memory with the "Lake of blue flowers".

The project is financed by Italy’s Recovery and Resilience plan by EUR 2.4 million.