Sacro Bosco of Bomarzo

Pier Francesco Orsini commissioned this from 1552, apparently in grief after his wife's death, and it inverts every rule of the Renaissance garden: instead of symmetry and order, a wood scattered with colossal figures carved from the volcanic rock where it lay, an ogre's head with an open mouth you walk into, a leaning house built deliberately off-plumb to disorient, a war elephant crushing a soldier, a dragon fighting dogs. An inscription says the wonders were made only to release the heart. It was abandoned for centuries, rediscovered in the twentieth, and Salvador Dalí visited in 1948 and made a film about it.

What you actually see

• The ogre's mouth - a giant head with a room inside it.
• The leaning house - a building built off-plumb to unbalance visitors.
• The war elephant - a colossus crushing a Roman soldier.
• The scattered layout - figures placed without symmetry through the wood.

When to go

April to October; the wood is muddy in winter and paths are uneven year-round. It is quieter on weekdays. Allow around two hours to walk the full circuit.

Honest expectations

Paths are rough, steep in places and slippery after rain. Interpretation is thin, and the garden's meaning is genuinely unresolved. It is a considerable drive from Rome.

Nearby

Viterbo lies southwest; Lake Bolsena is west.