The Garden of the Finzi-Continis

In Ferrara at the end of the 1930s, the narrator, a young Jewish man, is drawn into the walled world of the aristocratic Finzi-Contini family and their vast private garden, where he falls hopelessly in love with the elusive Micòl as the fascist race laws close a ring around them all. Bassani maps his own city: the great garden behind the walls off Corso Ercole I d'Este, the ramparts the young people cycle along, the synagogue on Via Mazzini, and the monumental Jewish cemetery where the book begins and the family's tomb waits.

Micòl Finzi-Contini

The Finzi-Contini garden and villa

Part 2

Behind a high wall lies the enchanted garden the Finzi-Contini keep for themselves, with its tennis court, its ancient trees and its private world of privilege. When the Jewish young of Ferrara are barred from the town's clubs, Micòl and Alberto open the garden to them, and the narrator's long, hopeless love for Micòl takes root here.

Part 2

inspired by The family's vast walled garden and villa, the magna domus, are invented but sited where Bassani places them, along Corso Ercole I d'Este toward the northern city walls of Ferrara.

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