Municipal Villa of Taormina

Unknown to many, Taormina’s Villa Comunale or Parco Colonna is an elegant public garden, landscaped to the smallest detail. It was commissioned by Lady Florence Trevelyan, an English noblewoman and cousin of Queen Victoria, in the late 1800s. It takes the form of a large terraced park overlooking the sea, populated by rare exotic plants, fanciful and peculiar structures resembling Chinese pagodas.