Trail of Monsters in Sacro Bosco, Italy

In travel, as in life, serendipity is a wonderful thing. What may start out as one adventure to explore a specific destination or attraction can lead to a completely different and unexpected discovery. This is exactly what happened on a day trip to visit one of Italy’s mysterious hidden gems, Sacro Bosco, an enigmatic 16th-century garden of monumental stone sculptures located about an hour outside of Rome. The garden was a delight to explore, but it was after speaking with a local that our road trip took an unplanned turn and led us to a completely unexpected surprise nearby.

Sacro Bosco, the ‘Sacred Wood’

What could be more intriguing than a one-of-a-kind Renaissance Garden set in a forest and filled with giant mythological gods and monsters carved from the very rock of the landscape itself? Add in the fact that these woods and their creatures lay hidden for almost 400 years before being rediscovered in the 1940s, and the story behind the Sacro Bosco garden has all the makings of an Indiana Jones film.

Bomarzo

Sacro Bosco is located at the foot of Bomarzo, a charming hilltop village about an hour’s drive from Rome. Like so many of these villages that seem to sprout atop the volcanic rock outcroppings so common in this part of Italy, Bomarzo is a hodge-podge of hilly cobblestone streets and little nooks and crannies tucked between characteristic stone buildings. One of the largest buildings here is a grand palazzo that was home to Duke Pier Francesco Orsini, an eccentric 16th-century prince and ex-soldier who made this place a refuge from the horrors of war he had experienced in the papal armies. This emotional fallout may also have been the initial inspiration for his garden: a way to escape the darkness and trauma of battle by creating a mystical world populated with allegorical figures and imaginative sculptures.

But it was after Orsini’s beautiful wife Giulia Farnese died prematurely in 1560 that Sacro Bosco became an expression of his profound grief as well, and a way for Orsini to honor his wife while exorcising his other demons.

Monsters, Mythology, and More

Sacro Bosco is unlike any other Italian Renaissance Garden of its time. Here there are no formal hedges or borders, no pruned plantings, structured walkways, or classical symmetry. Visitors follow a path that seems to meander between naturally forested grottoes and open spaces, following the topography of the land. And at every turn, there is a fantastical figure or structure carved from the volcanic stone (‘tufo’) found in this region of Italy.

Sphinxes and satyrs flank the paths, and grotesque she-vipers with snake-like appendages recline under trees. A pair of mythological titans wrestle in a violent struggle at the foot of a stone staircase, while nearby a giant dragon fends off an attack by lions. A rearing Pegasus tops the center of a long-dead fountain, beside a grotto where a sea creature opens its huge jaws to swallow a tortoise ridden by a winged Nike.

The most impressive of all these sculptures is the giant face of Orcus, the god of the underworld, whose gaping maw is both menacing and mesmerizing, tempting the visitor to enter and see what lies within its depths. It’s no wonder many refer to this garden as the Park of the Monsters.

What Orsini hoped to communicate with Sacro Bosco is as enigmatic as the message carved above the mouth of Orcus: “Ogni Pensiero Vola” or “Every thought flies”. Is this Duke Orsini’s caution that thoughts spoken aloud here will echo for all to hear? Or is it an invitation to each visitor to free their mind and simply interpret the garden the way they see fit? No one will ever know, because there are no written records left behind by Orsini to explain his vision.

A Garden That Lay Hidden for 400 Years

The pagan and demonic nature of some of Sacro Bosco’s carved figures would not have sat well with the Vatican in the late 1500s. This was probably part of the reason why after Orsini’s death in 1583, his garden was abandoned and taken over by the woods in which it lay, where it would remain hidden for almost 400 years.

Salvador Dali Reveals a Surreal Gem

Sacro Bosco only came to light in modern times thanks to a high-profile visit by surrealist Salvador Dali, who visited the site in 1938, posing with these giant carvings on a well-publicized newsreel. The surreal nature of the garden obviously appealed to the artist, and after Dali’s visit, a real estate entrepreneur (Giovanni Bettini) saw the opportunity for tourism, and he and his wife began an extensive, 20-year restoration of the 7-acre grounds.

Decades later, Sacro Bosco is still a privately run, well-organized tourist attraction. Yet this unusual destination remains largely unknown and off the radar of most visitors and even many Italians, a rare treat in a country that attracts tens of millions of visitors every year.

A Serendipitous Lunch Conversation

Sacro Bosco may have been what brought us to Bomarzo, but it turned out there was another surprise in store for us nearby, which we heard about by chance after returning to the village for lunch and chatting with Roberto Re, the owner of a local restaurant.

Re is a transplant from Rome, and after relocating to Bomarzo, he dove into the local history and lore, including a story he shared with us about an unusual artifact located in a nearby town: a Moai, one of the monolithic human figures famously found on Easter Island.

“A Moai? Here, in Italy?” I asked, not sure whether my understanding of Italian was as good as I thought. “Absolutely!” was Roberto’s response, and he went on to explain.

A Made-for-Italy Moai

In the late 1980s, an Italian journalist named Mino D’Amato was working on a television program entitled ‘In Search of the Ark’ that focused on the need for restoration of the Easter Island Moai. He was searching for a type of local stone with a composition like those of the statues on Easter Island, in order to demonstrate how the original statues were carved. The volcanic tufo that formed the foundations of the town of Vittorchiano, a hilltop town not far from Bomarzo, was a close match.

A huge chunk of the material was sourced from the area and sculpting of a 6-metre-high Moai began. The work was executed by 11 members of the Atan family, originally from Rapa Nui, some of whom could trace their ancestry back fourteen generations. These artists used the same construction techniques and Maori tools as their ancestors, creating a faithful reproduction of the originals, with stylized, elongated facial features, exaggerated earlobes, and hands folded over the torso. For four weeks, Italian television covered their progress until the statue was complete when it was raised in Vittorchiano as part of a sacred “Kuranto” ceremony.

A Must-Do Detour

Once we learned that Vittorchiano was only 10 minutes away from Bomarzo, we knew we had to add this to our road trip itinerary before heading back to Rome.

Arriving in Vittorchiano at the overlook on Via della Teverina, it was more than a little surreal to see a Moai statue standing proudly here, 14,500 kilometers [9,000 miles] away from Easter Island. When setting out that morning to explore a garden of 500-year-old giant stone carvings, we would never have expected to find ourselves standing beside the only example of a Moai outside of Easter Island as well.

Serendipity may have led us to this place, but perhaps the events that unfolded on this trip weren’t as disconnected as we thought: maybe following our noses from a mysterious Renaissance Garden to discover a Moai statue was the perfect manifestation of Sacro Bosco’s message of ‘Ogni Pensiero Vola’. By letting our thoughts and imagination ‘fly’, we had landed somewhere completely unexpected and discovered something wonderful and surprising in the process. I think Orsini would approve.