Orso Orsini was a prince of wild ways. Wayward brother of the cultured condottiero Niccolò, he married the beautiful Eleanora degli Atti di Morlupo, whose name was long but her life short. He strangled her in a fit of unfounded jealousy in 1575 on the bridge outside Pitigliano and threw her body into the ravine.

Bower sculpted from the volcanic rock

The recently completed Parco Orsini  thus came to be known as the lugubrious Parco degli Strozzoni, Stranglers Park.

Crumbling thrones overlooking the valley in the Orsini Park, Pitigliano.

And yet the park had been planned as a place of quiet contemplation, a ‘locus amoenus’ along the lines of the nearby  Bosco Sacro or Sacred Wood of Bomarzo (below), built about the same time in 1552.

Bomarzo, “Ogni Pensiero Vola” (“Every Thought Flies”, but games, even hide and seek, picnics, photography – all forbidden)

This had been laid out with grotesque and massive sculpture on the orders of Vicino Orsini, a distant cousin of Orso and Niccolò. Vicino had had the garden designed on Hermetic principles by Pirro Ligorio,

Bomarzo

architect of genius (he was responsible for the water works at Villa Este in Tivoli and was also the first Italian to design buildings specifically to resist earthquakes).

The sculpture was designed to amaze, and it still does though the garden is not what it was and the water element is now completely missing; Bomarzo also has the stroppiest, most belligerent and gratuitously discourteous custodians I have ever encountered, anywhere. Bomarzo is now a major tourist attraction visited by the likes of Jean Cocteau, Salvador Dalì and Antonioni. It even featured in  film version of ‘Alice in Wonderland’.

not perhaps what you might think but the remains of a reclining goddess

Parco Orsini on the other hand has no custodians at all, is difficult to find and what is more the statuary is largely overgrown, crumbling and un-cared for – it is just like stumbling upon an enchanted secret garden.

the reclining goddess from the other side

The statue of the Orsini family in Pitigliano, Tuscany.

Orso Orsini who quite apart from strangling his luckless wife also had a neighbour of his Galeazzo Farnese murdered during a hunting party. He got his comeuppance when he was himself slain on a bridge by Prospero Colonna.

The model is trying the pose for  “Carpe Diem” on one of the several thrones looking over the Lente valley

At the end of the escarpment there is a belvedere carved out of the rock with a fine view across the Lente Valley towards Sorano. I have used this enchanted wood in two my pictures  This Autumn Evening and Carpe Diem (in which you may notice a transposed Orsini bear).

an out-take from the This Autumn Evening shoot

Rather optimistically the local municipality, at considerable expense, built a recreation area with scores of wooden picnic tables. However in true municipal style they neglected to create access or a parking area, so now it is as overgrown, out of sight and unknown as the Orsini Park itself – which does not exactly break my heart.

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Sacred Way from above

They are not strictly roads as they don’t lead anywhere, most of them meandering around apparently aimlessly. Were they used for mysterious chthonic rites? Quite possibly. What we see now is a shadow of their former selves. All of the ways have collapsed at least in part as tree roots have undermined the steep sides, so that they are much wider and shallower now.

Also they would once have curved in at the top, the two walls almost meeting and thus letting in very little light to the path below. It must have been a very eerie during the day, even more so at night. The Etruscans are a very mysterious people. They spoke a non Indo-European language, their language has only been partly deciphered and anyway their literature is almost completely lost.

killer roots

But the Sacred Ways are dying…. of neglect. Tree roots are the worst enemy.They split the walls and a huge wedge of cliff falls down into the ravine. Until about 50 years ago the farmers used these ways to reach their fields, they maintained them and cut down the trees. Now the land is abandoned and the municipality does nothing to maintain these treasures that have survived 2,500 years only to die of neglect in our lifetime.

Technical notes: the  top photo was taken with Canon 5D, 18mm lens on panoramic tripod and four pictures were stiched together using PS5 photomerge

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