ROME: For more than half a century, one of the world’s biggest and most historically important gardens was left to degenerate into a wilderness.

The Reggia di Venaria Reale outside Turin is said to have provided Louis XIV with the inspiration for his palace at Versailles. But, by the end of the 1990s, the 80 hectares of land surrounding it had become little more than a wasteland. The geometric paths that criss-crossed the grounds were overgrown. The flower beds were lost under weeds. As for the vast, 250-metre-long fish pond, it had long since dried up and was barely discernible.

But on Sunday, after eight years of painstaking work and a budget of $33,393,54, 25 hectares of the reconstructed gardens were reopened to the public — the latest step in what the head of the regional government, Mercedes Bresso, has called “the biggest restoration project under way in Europe”.

The restoration of the grounds is just one aspect of the $26,714,353 project to restore the complex.

It is planned to reopen parts of the palace, or reggia, itself in September, but the entire scheme is not expected to be completed until 2011.—Dawn/ The Guardian News Service