File:Sonnenberg Gardens, Canandaigua, New York - 20210820 - 35 - Italian Garden, Belvedere, and Sonnenberg Mansion.jpg

English: As seen in August 2021, this view at Sonnenberg Gardens State Historic Park comprises the Belvedere at left, the Italian Garden at right, and the Sonnenberg Mansion rising in the background. The former is a majestic, Classically-styled pergola that extends between Rose Gardens and affords visitors sweeping vistas by which the differences between the two become evident: by contrast with the curvilinear patterns and relative minimalism of its counterpart on the other side of the peristyle, the much more formally designed Italian Garden - the first on the estate to be built, in 1903 - is laid out in a pattern of straight paths intersecting at right angles and is liberally stocked with Classically-inspired monumental structural and ornamental elements, an aesthetic based on Renaissance-era gardens in Italy hence its name. Behind the bushes in the foreground at right is one of four fleur-de-lys-shaped sunken flower beds, carpeted densely with low-lying annual foliage in a style that, while popular in the Victorian era, was very unusual as an element of formal gardens of this type. In the background is Sonnenberg itself, the palatial 1887 Queen Anne-style mansion in which the owners - prominent New York banker Frederick Ferris Thompson and his wife Mary (née Clark), the daughter of former New York Governor Myron Holley Clark and a noted philanthropist and benefactress in her own right - spent their summers each year until their respective deaths in 1899 and 1923.