Lanta Davis and Vince Reighard

Visiting the Sacro Bosco (Italian for Sacred Grove), a 16th-century garden in Bomarzo, Italy, is no ordinary walk through the park. The seven-acre site’s sculpted monsters, open tombs and dramatic depictions of supernatural combatants make the experience more akin to braving a Renaissance version of a haunted house. Visitors can wander through a tilted building, run away from a giant gaping mouth and—if they manage to get past Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guards the gates of the underworld—descend into hell.

The Sacro Bosco’s colossal stone statues are frightening to behold. But what makes this garden extra eerie is that no one knows for sure why monsters haunt these woods. “No receipts, account books or commission documents survive to tell us about the Sacro Bosco’s creation,” says John Garton, an art historian at Clark University and the co-author of an upcoming book about the garden. Pier Francesco Orsini, the duke who commissioned the Sacro Bosco in the mid-1500s, left no explicit clues.

A statue of a Greek sea god named Glaucus
A statue of a Greek sea god named Glaucus Albarubescens via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 4.0
A statue of Cerberus, the three-headed guard of the gates of the underworld
A statue of Cerberus, the three-headed guard of the gates of the underworld Albarubescens via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 4.0

Commonly called the Park of Monsters, the Sacro Bosco doesn’t exactly fit in with other historical Renaissance gardens. These spaces “were usually rationally designed, with specific paths to follow and one theme that brings everything together,” says Anatole Tchikine, an architectural historian and curator of rare books at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C. Consider, for instance, the Italian gardens at Villa d’Este in Tivoli, which tell the story of the mythological hero Hercules, or the aquatic-inspired features at Villa Lante in Bagnaia. At the Sacro Bosco, however, Tchikine argues that no single narrative provides a satisfying explanation; similarly, the park’s labyrinthine pathways offer no specific itinerary for visitors to follow.

“Most Renaissance gardens are a safe respite in nature,” Garton says. But the Sacro Bosco is a “rambling woods filled with surprises, frightful beasts and ancient ruins.” A visitor is never quite sure what is lurking around the corner. Not all of the Sacro Bosco’s sculptures terrify, but “some features in the garden are meant to haunt the visitor’s memory,” Garton adds.

Part of what haunts visitors and scholars alike is the mystery behind the monsters. Statues of sphinxes at the entrance of the garden seem to challenge visitors to solve the riddle of its meaning, with cryptic inscriptions throughout the site offering hints to those who attempt to figure out what a perilously leaning house; a half-viper, half-woman creature; an elephant carrying a fallen soldier with its trunk; and the Roman sea god Neptune have in common.

A statue of Neptune, the Roman god of freshwater and the sea
A statue of Neptune, the Roman god of freshwater and the sea Benedicta Mary Lee via Flickr under CC BY 2.0
Echidna, a half-woman, half-snake monster from Greek mythology (left) and lions (right)
Echidna, a half-woman, half-snake monster from Greek mythology (left), and a pair of lions (right) Courtesy of the Sacro Bosco

Theories abound: Perhaps Orsini created the garden as a tribute to his late wife. Maybe he wanted to present an allegory informed by classical literature and art. But no one knows for certain what the sculptures really mean. The Park of Monsters’ riddles remain unsolved.

The key to unlocking the code may lie in learning more about the man who created the monsters: Orsini, a duke of Bomarzo who was known by the nickname Vicino. The eerie, frightening atmosphere of the Sacro Bosco led some modern visitors to question whether Orsini commissioned the monstrous sculptures because he was a monster himself. After visiting the Sacro Bosco, Argentine writer Manuel Mujica Láinez wrote a 1962 novel, Bomarzo, that depicts Orsini as a morally corrupt madman with a hunched back, who plotted vengeance against his wife and brother-in-law after discovering they’d had an affair. Mujica Láinez’s story was entirely imagined, but it was so convincing that some thought it was true. The novel was also adapted into an opera. Both works of fiction widely influenced how people in the 20th century viewed Orsini and his stone monsters.

The historical record doesn’t support the characterization of the duke as a vindictive monster. But his garden might very well have been an external expression of his internal, invisible demons. These “monsters” were not madness, but rather grief and loss. Orsini was a well-connected, powerful nobleman, but his life was not one of leisure and happiness. Born in 1523, he inherited both the dukedom and the Bomarzo estate in 1542, shortly before he married Giulia Farnese, a relative of Pope Paul III. In the early 1550s, Orsini left home to fight in a war against France, but he was captured and held as a prisoner of war. Giulia died not long after her husband returned to Bomarzo.

Statue of a sphinx
A statue of a sphinx Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

Though parts of the Sacro Bosco were built before Giulia’s death, the majority of the garden, especially its more monstrous and grotesque features, was created after she died, leading some to speculate that the project was an expression of the duke’s grief. “There was little doubt,” Tchikine says, that “Orsini was quite traumatized when his wife died.”

After Giulia’s death, Orsini commissioned a large mausoleum for her. Near to it are several sculptures related to the underworld, including Persephone, the queen of the dead, whose lap acts as a bench, and Cerberus. In a 1570 letter, Orsini wrote that he “received every sort of consolation by having the Sacro Bosco in place of [his] dearest beloved.” One of the park’s inscriptions simply reads, “Just to relieve the heart.” It is possible, Tchikine says, to read the garden as a kind of “therapy for [Orsini], something that he was constructing from the grief he experienced.”

At the same time, some of the sculptures convey a sense of wit and playfulness that doesn’t easily tie into the grief narrative.

The Sacro Bosco’s most famous sculpture, the so-called Mouth of Hell, swallows visitors whole with its enormous open mouth. It could be interpreted as a symbol of the all-consuming nature of grief. But the sculpture also acts as a place of entertainment. Orsini reportedly held dinner parties inside the artwork: “[Its] mouth makes the door, and the windows are the eyes; and inside the tongue is used as the table, and the teeth as the seats,” a 16th-century visitor to the garden recounted. “And when one lays dinner with candles lit among the drinks, from a distance it appears as the most frightful visage.” Several other statues, especially depictions of animals like turtles and dolphins, don’t make immediate sense as memorials to the dead.

The so-called Mouth of Hell
The so-called Mouth of Hell is the Sacro Bosco's most famous sculpture. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons
Elephant sculpture at the Sacro Bosco
Elephants, dolphins and turtles are among the animals depicted at the Sacro Bosco. Lanta Davis

Some scholars suggest looking to Orsini’s library rather than his life. Renaissance art drew heavily on ancient Roman sources, such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Orsini was well educated, and the stories referenced in his garden reflect the texts he read. The garden’s sculptures abound with possible literary references, from Ovid and Petrarch to later Italian poets like Dante Alighieri and Ludovico Ariosto. When visitors walk past Cerberus to descend the stairs into death’s domain, says Tchikine, they imitate Orpheus’ journey to rescue his wife from the underworld. But not every sculpture has an obvious literary source, and once again, the garden’s menagerie of monsters defies logic.

The key to the riddle could also rest not in Orsini, but in the landscape itself. Tchikine describes an “aura of mystery” present in both the Sacro Bosco and the surrounding area of Bomarzo. The Italian town’s secluded, dark trees and large boulders give rise to a “strange, uncanny feeling” reinforced by the haunted quality of the centuries-old ruins scattered throughout the landscape, he says.

The Etruscans, a pre-Roman group who resided in the area in the first millennium B.C.E., left behind tombs, a pyramid and miscellaneous structures. As with the Sacro Bosco itself, practically “no sources and very little history” about Bomarzo’s ancient past survives today, Tchikine says. Given that the area has been populated for more than 2,000 years, he adds, this historical gap further enhances the Sacro Bosco’s “general sense of mystery.”

An Etruscan-style bench
An Etruscan-style bench Albarubescens via Wikimedia Commons under CC BY-SA 4.0

Orsini seemingly drew inspiration from the history of his home, borrowing techniques from Etruscan tombs, including creating the sculptures out of “living” stone (meaning local rock carved in situ), just as the ancient civilization did. The Sacro Bosco boasts Etruscan-style tombs and other architectural elements associated with the pre-Roman culture.

The Sacro Bosco’s strange shapes might even be as simple as Orsini replicating what was already present in the natural environment. He could have noticed stones that reminded him of living creatures, as one might spot a cloud that looks like a dog. Perhaps Orsini saw a boulder that resembled an elephant or a dragon, and then he recruited a carver to help coax that image out of the rock. If so, Orsini’s process was similar to that of the Renaissance’s greatest sculptor, Michelangelo, who described his work as liberating figures trapped within the stone. Maybe Orsini was simply freeing the monsters and mythical beasts he saw stuck inside of his garden.

After Orsini’s death in the mid-1580s, the Sacro Bosco almost died, too. Falling into obscurity for centuries, the garden was only “rediscovered” in the years after World War II, when prominent figures like Italian critic Mario Praz, Spanish Surrealist Salvador Dalí and French poet Jean Cocteau publicized it in their creative works. Abandoned in the woods, the site’s monsters seemed to emerge from the earth itself. Eyes peered out from behind the trees, and visitors soon spotted sculpted wildlife such as elephants, dragons and giant turtles.

Salvador Dalí in visita al parco di Bomarzo
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Since the origin of these monsters had been all but forgotten, observers’ imaginations ran wild. Some guests were captivated by the dark, twisting forces they saw at work in the garden, whose mysterious and often grotesque sculptures seemed to tap into their subconscious fears and desires. As word of its stone monsters spread, the Sacro Bosco rose out of its hiding place in the woods.

Today, the garden continues to cast its spell upon those who wander onto its grounds. That the site resists a simple, comprehensive explanation seems to be precisely its point. Whether scholars ever puzzle out the meaning of the monsters, one fact is certain: The Sacro Bosco, in the words of one of Orsini’s inscriptions, “resembles only itself and nothing else.”

The Three Graces in a nymphaeum
The Three Graces in a nymphaeum Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

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Lanta Davis and Vince Reighard

When they aren’t traveling the country in their camper van, Lanta Davis and Vince Reighard write and teach in Central Indiana. Davis is the author of Becoming by Beholding.