Parco delle Cascine

The Cascine is the long (3.5km), narrow public park lining the north bank of the Arno. It was originally the Medici’s dairy farm, or cascina, and later a Grand Ducal hunting park and theatre for public spectacles. During her reign (1807-15) Elisa Baciocchi, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, made it a public park. Not long after, a stroll on a windy autumn day in the Cascine in 1819 inspired Shelley to compose the ‘Ode to the West Wind’.

Three years later Shelley’s drowned body was burnt on a pyre in Viareggio, by his friend Trelawny; curiously, a similar incineration took place in the Cascine in 1870 when the Maharaja of Kohlapur died in Florence on his way home, after paying his respects to Queen Victoria. According to Hindu ritual his body had to be burned near the confluence of two rivers, in this case, the Arno and Mugnone at the far end of the park, on a spot now marked by the Ponte all’Indiano (the Indian’s Bridge), a modern, bright rust-coloured road bridge which can be seen for miles around. There's also a rather pretty Monumento all'Indiano featuring a bust of the Maharaja under a little marble baldacchino.