Scholars said in May that they may be some of the first formal gardens ever designed and built.

The fabled gardens, created by retired Roman General Lucullus, became a model for other gardens in the city.

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“The architecture of the ancient Roman gardens appeared before our eyes. It seems like a dream,” Maria Antonietta Tomei, of the Rome Superintendency for Archaeology, was quoted by the UK’s Times newspaper.

The Gardens of Lucullus, built around a villa, were one of the first attempts in the West to discipline nature through landscape gardening.