Bomarzo and its Monsters’ Grove
Bomarzo is a town of the province of Viterbo, in the lower valley of the Tiber. It is located 15 kilometres east-northeast of Viterbo and 68 kilometres from Rome.
Bomarzo’s main attraction is a garden, usually referred to as the Bosco Sacro (Sacred grove) or, locally, Bosco dei Mostri (“Monsters’ Grove”), named after the many larger-than-life sculptures, some sculpted in the bedrock, which populate this predominantly barren landscape.
It is the work of Pier Francesco Orsini, called Vicino (1528–1588) – He was greatly devoted to his wife Giulia Farnese, daughter of Galeazzo Farnese, Duke of Latera and when she died, he created the gardens.
The design has been attributed to Pirro Ligorio, a well known architect and antiquarian of the time.
The park of Bomarzo was intended not to please, but to astonish.
The many monstrous statues appear to be unconnected to any rational plan and appear to have been strewn almost randomly.
The reason for the layout and design of the garden is largely unknown: perhaps they were meant as a foil to the perfect symmetry and layout of the great Renaissance gardens nearby at Villa Farnese at Caprarola and Villa Lante at Bagnaia. Next to a formal exedra is a tilting building, the so-called Casa Storta or Twisted House.
A small octagonal temple was added about twenty years later to honor Orsini’s wife, Giulia Farnese.
During the 19th century and well into the 20th, the garden became overgrown and neglected but in the 1970s a program of restoration was implemented by the Bettini family, and today the garden, which remains private property, is a major tourist attraction.