Europe has three of the ten most beautiful gardens in the world, based on tourists' reviews

The ranking was compiled taking into account comments from Trip Advisor

The HouseFresh portal recently published a ranking, which determined the most beautiful gardens in the world. Their methodology was as simple as it was brilliant – count the number of times the word “beautiful” has been mentioned in Trip Advisor users’ reviews on parks throughout the month of December 2021.

The green area that came out on top was Gardens by the Bay in Singapore. Its futuristic layout might be a tad too far to reach for many this summer, however. So, we thought this would be a good time to focus on the European gardens that made it into the top 10 and shine the spotlight on them.

After all, the idea of pleasure gardens, which later became public venues, often originated with European aristocracy and royalty and their green areas or hunting grounds.

Europe’s three most beautiful gardens: a touch of history

According to tourists, Europe’s most beautiful garden (and third-best in the world) is Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris. Nowadays, also known as the Senate Garden, alluding to the fact that the French upper chamber of the parliament owns it, you can find it in the 6^th arrondissement.

The Luxembourg Garden gathered 6,818 mentions of the “beautiful” adjective in reviews on Trip Advisor during the reference period. We owe its existence to none other than Queen Marie de Medici, who was the initiator of the project. Born in Italy, the 17^th-century queen wanted to recreate gardens from homeland, while evidently suffering from a bit of nostalgia.

Jardin du Luxembourg was created in 1612 and today spans 56.8 acres, divided between French-style and English-style gardens. Its grand attraction is the Medici Fountain – a true Baroque gem. Another attraction you can see is the original model of the Statue of Liberty, whose much larger replica was sent as a gift from the French people to the Americans.

The second-best in Europe is the Tivoli Gardens (7^th overall in the world), located in the Danish capital of Copenhagen. This 19-century amusement park and pleasure garden gathered 3,806 mentions of the word “beautiful”.

Tivoli was built in 1843 and named after Jardin de Tivoli in France (itself named after an Italian town used as a resort by Roman emperors). There’s a royal connection in its creation, too. Reportedly, the park’s developer Georg Carstensen obtained permission to create Tivoli Gardens from Danish King Christian VIII with the wink that “when people are amusing themselves, they do not talk about politics”.

Nowadays, it’s the third oldest amusement park in existence. It has a roller coaster, Rutschebanen, which was commissioned in 1914 and is still operating today.

In addition, Tivoli Gardens is quite the cultural venue. It contains a hotel, a boating lake, a concert hall and an open-air theatre.

The last European park to make it into the world’s top ten in terms of beauty is Keukenhof (2,719 mentions and 9^th place overall), in the Dutch municipality of Lisse. It is also informally known as the Garden of Europe, having become one of the Netherlands’ most visited attractions and an iconic symbol of the local flower industry.

Its origins are aristocratic, too. Originally, it was the kitchen garden and hunting ground for the Teylingen Castle in the 15^th century. Its present shape and design, however, was formalized in 1949, when a consortium of flower growers and exporters decided to use it as a showcase for their production.

The facts are astounding – every autumn 40 gardeners plant 7 million bulbs in Keukenhof. The bulbs are donated by flower growers. The planting is done in a synchronized way to ensure that blooming happens in waves during an 8-week period.

The park belongs to a private foundation, which receives no government subsidies and generates all of its income from ticket sales and food and beverage licences.