The Sacro Bosco (the Sacred Wood, also known as the Parco dei Mostri, the Park of the Monsters) at Bomarzo (in the province of Viterbo, 80km north of Rome, 15km east of Viterbo) was commissioned by Pier Francesco Orsini, called Vicino (1523-1585), a condottiere of the Orsini house who had spent years as a prisoner of war after the Battle of Mühlberg (1547) and who, on his release, channelled his specific grief (his wife Giulia Farnese had died during his imprisonment) and his equally specific wealth into the creation of the most unusual garden in the history of Italian art. The Sacro Bosco isn't a Renaissance garden in the canonical sense, it has no symmetry, no central axis, no flower beds, no reflecting pools. It has monsters: massive stone sculptures carved from the natural basalt outcrops of the woodland, depicting giants, dragons, elephants carrying castle towers, a leaning house, a screaming face wide enough to enter through the mouth, a Protogoras fighting a lion. The iconographic program has been debated by art historians for 150 years without consensus, it is either the expression of Vicino Orsini's personal grief, a Mannerist joke at the expense of the Tuscan garden tradition, an alchemical program, a melancholy meditation on impermanence, or all of these simultaneously.
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The Bomarzo Garden: Key Monuments
The Screaming Face (Orco)
The most famous and most photographed sculpture in the Sacro Bosco: a giant face carved from a basalt outcrop, mouth open in a scream or a roar, wide enough that an adult can step inside the mouth and stand in the carved interior chamber. The inscription above the entrance reads "OGNI PENSIERO VOLA" (Every thought flies), the specific ambiguity of the phrase (liberation? futility? emptiness?) is characteristic of the Bomarzo inscriptions throughout, which are in Italian, Latin, and invented scripts, and which resist simple interpretation. Salvador Dalí visited Bomarzo in 1948 and called it "the garden of dreams". He returned multiple times.
The Leaning House and the Elephant
The casa pendente (the leaning house) is a two-storey stone building constructed deliberately off-plumb, the interior feels like being on a ship in a slight roll, the floors and walls at 15° from horizontal, producing a specific disorientation that no amount of intellectual preparation eliminates. The elephant (a carved stone elephant carrying a castle tower with a writhing soldier in its trunk) references the Punic Wars and the specific Orsini connection to the Roman tradition of depicting Hannibal's war elephants, but in a scale and a forest setting that makes it simultaneously monstrous and dreamlike.
Q&A: Bomarzo Garden of Monsters
How do I get to Bomarzo from Rome?
By car: 80km north of Rome on the A1 (exit Attigliano-Orte) then SP on the Viterbo road to Bomarzo. Total driving time approximately 90 minutes. The garden (sacrobosco.eu) is open daily from 9am to sunset. Admission approximately €13 adults. No public transport serves Bomarzo directly from Rome, the car is necessary. Best combined with: Soriano nel Cimino (20km west), Civita di Bagnoregio (25km northwest), and the natural hot springs at Bagnaccio near Viterbo (30km).
Curiosità
L'iscrizione sull'ingresso al Sacro Bosco recita: "Tu che entri qua, poni mente parte a parte e dimmi poi se tante meraviglie sian fatte per inganno o pur per arte." (You who enter here, observe part by part and then tell me if so many marvels were made as a trick or as art.) La domanda di Vicino Orsini al visitatore è rimasta senza risposta definitiva per cinque secoli. È l'unico giardino italiano che pone questa domanda.
Internal Links
- Soriano nel Cimino: La Fontana dello Stesso Patrono
- Terme Viterbo: Il Bagnaccio Vicino a Bomarzo
- Tuscia Viterbese: Borghi e Giardini
- Dal Manierismo al Barocco: Il Contesto
- Fotografare Bomarzo: Luce e Composizione
- Bomarzo in Autunno: Il Bosco nel Colore
- Tuscia e Maremma: Il Grande Giro del Lazio Nord
