Tarot Garden
Giardino dei Tarocchi
Interesting facts
- Niki de Saint Phalle lived inside the Empress for several years, with her bedroom in one of the figure's breasts and her kitchen in the other.
- The Empress's ground floor is a single room lined entirely with mirror fragments, including a mirrored dining table under a chandelier made by Jean Tinguely.
- The artist paid for the garden herself, partly by launching her own perfume in 1982 to raise money for the project.
- The total cost is estimated at around five million dollars, roughly ten billion lire at the time, with no public funding involved.
- The tallest figures stand about 12 to 15 metres high, and several are hollow enough for visitors to walk through.
- The garden covers about two hectares on the south slope of the Garavicchio hill, partly in an old quarry.
- A local postman, Ugo Celletti, discovered a passion for mosaic on the site and went on to work on the garden for decades.
- The ceramicist Venera Finocchiaro trained women from the surrounding villages in the tile and glazing techniques used on the sculptures.
- Saint Phalle's long exposure to polyester resin, fibreglass dust and solvents while making her sculptures is blamed for the lung disease that troubled her later life.
- Besides Gaudí and Bomarzo, she counted Simon Rodia's Watts Towers in Los Angeles among the visionary works that inspired the garden.
Why it is worth it
The Tarot Garden is the life's great work of Niki de Saint Phalle: a hillside in southern Tuscany populated by huge, brilliantly coloured sculptures based on the twenty-two cards of the Major Arcana of the tarot. Made of reinforced concrete and covered in mirror glass, ceramic tiles and mosaic, they rise from the hillside like the architecture of a dream: the Magician, the High Priestess, the Emperor, the Tower, the Pope, Justice, a dragon standing for Strength, the Moon. In bright sun the mirrored surfaces flash and scatter light across the paths, and the whole place has the joyful, slightly unsettling intensity of a fairground built by a visionary.
Saint Phalle, the French-American sculptor, had long dreamed of a garden of her own after seeing Gaudí's Park Güell in Barcelona, and she also admired the Sacro Bosco of Bomarzo and the Facteur Cheval's Palais Idéal. In the mid-1970s the brothers Carlo and Nicola Caracciolo, to whom she was introduced by Marella Caracciolo Agnelli, offered her land at Garavicchio, and work began in 1978. The first great figure, the Empress, a gigantic sphinx-like woman, was built between 1980 and 1983, and the artist lived and worked inside it for several years, using it as both studio and home. Jean Tinguely helped with the welded iron frameworks and added mechanical sculptures of his own until his death in 1991.
The garden was formally opened to the public on 15 May 1998, and Saint Phalle, who died in 2002, asked that nothing more be added after her. The entrance pavilion, designed by the Swiss architect Mario Botta, is deliberately severe, a protective wall before the riot of colour inside.
Getting there
The Tarot Garden is at Garavicchio, near Pescia Fiorentina in the municipality of Capalbio, at the southern tip of Tuscany close to the border with Lazio. The nearest city is Civitavecchia, about 46 km away, and the nearest airport is Rome Fiumicino (FCO), about 95 km away. By car, leave the SS1 Aurelia at the Pescia Fiorentina–Chiarone exit and follow the signs; there is parking beside the entrance. The nearest railway station is Capalbio, around 10 km away, from where the last stretch is by local bus or taxi.
Plan your visit
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Nearby places
- Cascate del Mulino 25.0 km · hot-spring
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From the encyclopaedia
The Tarot Garden is a sculpture garden based on the esoteric tarot, created by the French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle (1930–2002) in Pescia Fiorentina, località Garavicchio, in the municipality of Capalbio, province of Grosseto, Tuscany, Italy. The park was opened to the public in 1998.
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