ABSTRACT
In South Florida there is place where a complete universe of romantic visions is displayed before our eyes. A place with architectural beauties, flowering gardens and delightful corners in the shade of luxuriant trees, under a perpetually blue sky, with sunsets tinted with a soft light and wonderfully mild weather. This place is Coral Gables. It was here that George Merrick
decided to create his beautiful capriccio, or better said, his series of capricci. He inherited a plantation from his father and gradually enlarged it with the acquisition of more land. By 1921 he already had around 3,000 acres. After laying out the public ways with a meticulous arrangement of streets, avenues and piazzas, he planted trees to shade all of the routes. He planned, at different points, buildings that evoked the villages of the Spanish Mediterranean region. He created a real city, well defined with entrance gates that marked the access to an entirely different world, radically distinct from the surrounding context that is today the metropolitan area of Miami. The gates were real transitions to his world of a dream-like universe. Once the threshold is passed and one is within Coral Gables, the luxuriant vegetation, the gardens and the flowers emphasise and underline the character of the place. One is in a place that has little relation to the surrounding world.
