The Italian Gardens are on the South Cliff, cut into the slope between the Esplanade above and the Spa below, and they are the most beautiful and least visited thing in Scarborough.
They were laid out in 1912 as part of the South Cliff Gardens — a designed Edwardian landscape of terraces, paths and shelters running along the cliff face — and they are Italianate in the full sense: a formal rectangular terrace with a lily pond, clipped hedges, urns, statuary, a pergola and long views over the sea.
Enclosed and quiet. The gardens sit in a fold of the cliff, sheltered from the wind and hidden from the road above, and the effect is of a room rather than a park.
Formal planting — bedding, roses and shrubs — kept to a good standard.
A pond with waterlilies and fish.
Statues and stone seats throughout.
The view out over South Bay and the North Sea, framed by the planting.
The recurring description from people who find it is some version of hidden gem and magical, and the reason is the contrast. The seafront a few hundred metres below is arcades and crowds. The Italian Gardens are silent.
The whole of the South Cliff Gardens — about twenty hectares of Victorian and Edwardian cliff landscape — has undergone a major Heritage Lottery-funded restoration in recent years, and visitors returning after a long absence consistently remark on how much better and how much larger the gardens now are than they remember.
Paths, shelters, the Rose Garden, Shuttleworth Gardens and the cliff walks have all been brought back, and the connections between them reopened.
The Italian Gardens are one part of a long chain running the length of the South Cliff, and walking the whole thing is the better way to do it.
From the Spa at the bottom — the Victorian spa and concert hall complex, still hosting orchestral and popular concerts — paths zigzag up through the gardens to the Esplanade.
The Spa Cliff Lift, a funicular of 1875 and one of the oldest in Britain, runs between the Spa and the Esplanade, which saves the climb entirely.
The Rose Garden, Holbeck Gardens and the clifftop walk run south towards the Holbeck Hall site — the hotel that famously slid into the sea in a landslip in 1993.
Free, open at all times.
Location: off the Esplanade on the South Cliff, about 1.4 kilometres from the town centre — fifteen minutes’ walk, or up from the Spa.
Facilities: none in the gardens themselves; the Spa below has a café and toilets.
Access: the Italian Gardens terrace itself is largely level, but the approaches from above and below involve steps and steep paths. The Cliff Lift is the accessible route.
Parking: on the Esplanade, charged.
Best time: early morning, or late afternoon when the light comes along the terrace.
The Spa, below, with concerts, a café and the sun court.
The Esplanade, above, a run of grand Victorian and Edwardian hotels and terraces.
South Bay beach and the harbour, fifteen minutes north along the front.
The Rotunda Museum at the foot of the cliff — a purpose-built circular geological museum of 1829, designed on the advice of William Smith, the father of English geology, who lived in Scarborough.
On the South Cliff, off the Esplanade, between the town above and the Spa below — about fifteen minutes’ walk from the town centre.
Yes, free and open at all times.
Yes — the Spa Cliff Lift, a funicular of 1875, runs between the Spa and the Esplanade.
Laid out in 1912 as part of the South Cliff Gardens, and recently restored with Heritage Lottery funding.
Yes — it is the quietest and most beautiful public space in Scarborough, a few hundred metres from the busiest.