MARIA TERESA PARPAGLIOLO: RECONSTRUCTING A MOGHUL GARDEN. THE KĀBUL EXPERIENCE 1970-1972

After a long experience across Italy and England in landscape design, in 1970 Maria Teresa Parpagliolo Shephard went in Kābul to study the ancient garden Bāgh-I Bābur, asked by the Institute for the Middle and Far East (IsMEO). Her mission was to study the site, that includes the garden where the Emperor had wished to be buried, started from a measured survey including all the existing features, the position of the remaining trees, the buildings, the fountains. The goal were to understand why Bābur chose it particularly, amongst many others, for his last resting place, and what vicissitudes had happened in the long years of its existence. The research of Parpagliolo makes evidence of her interest in the Bāgh-I Bābur, as one of the very few links we possess today of a garden tradition which for more than 2500 years has subsisted in spite of wars and destructions. The formulation of the restoration project was for Parpagliolo to bring back some of its former splendours as a task which our modern age cannot discard, by a complete reconstruction of a lost environment.