Gardens of Bomarzo

The Sacro Bosco, the "Sacred Grove" of Bomarzo, better known as the Park of the Monsters, is one of the strangest gardens of the Renaissance. It lies in a wooded valley below the Orsini castle in Bomarzo, in the province of Viterbo in northern Lazio, and was commissioned in the 16th century by Pier Francesco "Vicino" Orsini, a condottiero and patron of the arts, after the death of his wife Giulia Farnese. The design is attributed to the architect and antiquarian Pirro Ligorio, and much of the sculpture to Simone Moschino.

Unlike the ordered symmetry of nearby Villa Lante or Villa Farnese, Bomarzo was meant to astonish rather than please. Giant figures, many carved straight out of the bedrock, appear among the trees without any obvious plan: an elephant crushing a Roman legionary, a dragon fighting lions, a whale, a giant tearing another figure apart, a tortoise with a winged woman on its back, a sleeping nymph, Pegasus, Cerberus. The best known is the Orcus, a huge gaping face whose open mouth is large enough that people once dined inside it; its upper lip bears the words "Ogni pensiero vola" (all thoughts fly), and the acoustics carry a whisper from inside to anyone standing at the foot of the steps. Near the formal exit gate the Leaning House, a small tower-like lodge, leans visibly off the vertical; it was dedicated to Cardinal Cristoforo Madruzzo, a friend of the Orsini couple.

At the top of the garden stands a small octagonal temple dedicated to Giulia Farnese. After centuries of neglect the garden was overgrown until the mid-20th century, when interest from Salvador Dalí and others encouraged the Bettini family to restore it through the 1970s; Giovanni Bettini and Tina Severi now lie in that temple. Inscriptions by the sculptures, some worn away, hint at a riddle that no one has fully solved, and the garden has inspired a novel and an opera by Manuel Mujica Láinez and Alberto Ginastera and Niki de Saint Phalle's Tarot Garden. It remains privately owned.

Getting there

The garden is just outside the village of Bomarzo. The nearest city is Viterbo, about 14 km away. The nearest airport by straight-line distance is Perugia San Francesco d'Assisi – Umbria International Airport (PEG), about 71 km away.