Le Cascine park is the most important urban park :
Le Cascine park is the most important urban park in Florence.
It's like a unique place where you find plenty of things to do...having a pic-nic or sleeping on the grass ...and there are more options..
You can go there every tuesday for the biggest open market in town: Florentines usually go there to find some good bargains. You can buy almost everything, from fruits and vegetables, to clothing, general groceries, houseware stands, antiquities, shoes! During Easter weeks the market is also open on Sunday. It's open from 7 am to 2 pm
You can find many activities available in the Cascine Park area which include; a swimming pool, sports center, race track, horse riding, dancing, bicycle rentals, concert facilities, university faculty of agriculture..and the 'L' Indian bar ( called this because it is found near the monument erected to indicating the point that the ashes of an Indian prince were scattered).
You will find one of the most popular basketball play-ground in town,
...and more....:
open all year long. Basketball players gather here especially on Saturday evening, and it seems they have lots of fun!
And you can obviously run, bike, roller blade, play volleyball or soccer...
A bit of History...
Alessandro de' Medici, who became Duke of Florence in 1532, started the exploitation of this area by establishing a farm. Le Cascine remained the Grand Duke's private property until the extinction of the Medici dynasty.
The Augsburg-Lorena family that succeeded the Medici as rulers of Florence gifted Le Cascine to the State Department of Possessions and the park was opened to the public and was gradually enriched with natural monuments : refreshment stands for the park's gardeners, shaped like miniature temples; iceboxes, shaped like pyramids; and fountains with masks.
For the entire Nineteenth Century Le Cascine park hosted the processions of carriages for their sunset promenades.
The most famous fountain in the park is the Fonte di Narciso, in 1819 at this very same pyramidal fountain, Shelley wrote the famous Ode to the West Wind.
Florence is the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance with many artworks by the Italian painters and sculptors masters. The countryside is dotted by fabulous castles going back the the early Renaissance period. One of the prominent Florentine families was the Medici.
Florence has a wide variety of concerts for the classical music lovers.
One interesting site is the birthplace of Amerigo Vespucci, the famous Florentine navigator from whom America has taken its name and whose name has been given to the airport of Florence.
The Vespucci family house is still well preserved in the Peretola, which is very close to the airport.
Another curiosity is in the name of the street where the flat is situated which derives from the starting point of a horse race (mossa=start) which was held during the middle ages until 1858 (Palio dei barberi)
Other Activities:
trekking in the nearby hillsite, shopping, specially for antiques and handicrafts, walking, jogging, swimming, wine tasting
