Villa Monastero gardens, Varenna

Villa Monastero was a Cistercian convent until the sixteenth century, then a private house, and is now a museum with a botanical garden that runs almost two kilometres along the shore between Varenna and Fiumelatte. The garden is the reason to come: a single long terrace at the water's edge, balustraded, planted with cypresses, palms, agaves and citrus, with the lake immediately below and the mountains of the western shore opposite.

It photographs like a corridor rather than a park. The path runs south with the water always on one side, so every few metres gives the same elements in a new arrangement — balustrade, cypress, lake, mountain. The neoclassical pavilion and the pergola near the house are the two built set pieces; the far end, towards Fiumelatte, is where the visitors thin out.

Entry is ticketed, and for much of the year the garden opens in the morning and closes before the light gets low, so this is a morning location by design. The light arrives across the lake from the east, front-lighting the terrace early and going flat by the middle of the day; keep compositions simple and let the water fill the background.