Hever Castle Italian & Tudor Gardens

Hever Castle is a château at Hever, in the United Kingdom. The recorded building campaign dates from the 13th century. The register records it as “Grade I listed building”. Details are drawn from Wikidata.

Famed as the childhood home of Anne Boleyn, second wife of King Henry VIII, Hever Castle was acquired in 1903 by American millionaire William Waldorf Astor. Astor embarked on an astonishing Edwardian landscape campaign, employing over one thousand craftsmen to excavate a 38-acre lake, divert the River Eden, and construct some of the grandest Italianate gardens in Europe. The crowning feature is the magnificent Italian Garden, designed specifically to display Astor's world-class collection of classical Roman, Greek, and Italian Renaissance sculpture. The four-acre space features formal stone terraces, colonnades, and the Pompeian Wall, terminating at the monumental loggia overlooking the lake, flanked by a massive fountain inspired by Rome's Trevi Fountain. Contrasting with the Italian grandeur are the intimate Tudor Rose Garden, an authentic herb garden, the giant clipped Yew Chess Set topiary (dating from 1904), and the famous Yew Maze and splashing Water Maze on Sixteen Acre Island. Protected at Grade I under NHLE List Entry 1000152, Hever Castle is celebrated as one of the supreme achievements of Edwardian historicist landscape design, uniting the intimate romanticism of a double-moated Tudor castle with imperial Mediterranean classical sculpture.

Wikidata · Q1132683 — CC0 1.0

National Heritage List for England (Historic England) · 1000152 — Open Government Licence v3.0

Wikimedia Commons · https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Hever%20Castle.jpg — CC BY 2.0

Discover the architecture and history of this place at Le Roi du Château.