The ruins of the Emperor Nero's "Golden House" were explored in the early sixteenth century; the Laocoon was discovered there in 1506 and the frescos seem to have influenced Raphael's decorations in the Vatican loggias. The Golden House had featured a fantastic landscape garden, this was destroyed soon after Nero's death. Renaissance intellectuals were familiar with the description of Nero's Golden House in the "Annals" of Tacitus, "Nero turned to account the ruins of his fatherland by building a palace, the marvels of which were to consist not so much in gold and gems, materials long familiar and vulgarized by luxury, as in fields and lakes and the air of solitude given by wooded ground alternating with clear tracts and open landscapes", but there is very little evidence that any Renaissance gardens were inspired by this description.
The ruins of the Emperor Hadrian's villa at Tivoli did have a strong influence on Renaissance gardens; a number of circular designs seem to have been inspired by Hadrian's "Teatro Marittimo", as well as by Varro's description of his combination aviary/fishpond. Padua's botanical garden is a good example of a circular garden, and in the latter half of the sixteenth century the Mausoleum of Augustus was turned into a circular garden by the Soderini family. One of the most well known descendants of Hadrian's "marine theatre" is the isoletto in Florence's Boboli Gardens, this feature was created in 1618.
The Renaissance was a revival of the Classical cultures of ancient Greece and Rome, but it was also a direct descendant of the Middle Ages. Early Renaissance gardens were essentially Medieval gardens in which Classical sculptures were displayed; even during the High Renaissance, most Florentine gardens retained this quality.
Islamic gardens also had a strong influence on Renaissance gardens, especially through their sophisticated use of fountains and giochi d'acqua (water games). The formality of many Islamic gardens may not have directly inspired the gardens of Renaissance Italy, but they helped Europeans to imagine what the gardens of Imperial Rome looked like. The gardens of Imperial Rome had been inspired by Persian gardens, and the gardens of the Islamic world had been inspired the gardens of Imperial Rome. The Renaissance was not just a revival of a dead culture, Islam had preserved quite a bit of the Classical heritage from ancient Greece and Rome and Renaissance Italy inherited this as a living culture.
