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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What was true for the artist in 1847, holds true for the landscape and documentary photographer today.

For at least 500 years this small community hosted a Jewish ghetto now sadly reduced from the  300 of Dennis’ day to just two persons, eighty year old Elena Servi, tireless custodian of the ghetto museum and synagogue, and her son.

Elena Servi

There may well have been a small Jewish community in the 16th century which moved here from Rome to benefit from the enlightened protection of the Orsini family, but there was certainly an influx of Jewish families from Castro after its annihilation in 1649 by Pope Innocent X – a misnomer if there was. His  mistress and sister-in-law, the fearsome Donna Olimpia, had a particular beef with the Farnese family, lords of the territory and prompted the pope to erase their capital Castro from the map.

Jewish Cemetery

Reconstructed corner building where Elena Servi lived until 1943. Sadly, but predictably, it has neither the beautiful loggia nor the elegant stonework of the building nextdoor.

The building by the main gate in which many Jews lived  including Elena’s family was blown up by the Germans in 1943 in order to swing their vehicles around the bend. The post war re-construction is easy to see.

The Jewish cemetery is on terraces on the side of the ravine outside town, fittingly below the Christian one on the ridge above. Burials from the end of the 19th century show an extraordinary similarity to monumental Christian cemeteries with strikingly unorthodox broken columns, statues and even an angel which goes to show how  assimilated the community had become.  But the community went into inexorable decline with the Racial Laws  promulgated by Mussolini in 1938. Life became very difficult for the Jews in Italy and no less so in Pitigliano. Jews lost their jobs and had their businesses closed, children were segregated into separate schools. Elena Servi recounts how her family were rescued from deportation and almost certain death in Auschwitz by the local peasant population who hid them in cottages, farms and caves from 1943 to liberation by the allies in June 1944. The only Jewish victim turned out to be a dentist who was killed by the allied bombing raid on the bridge in 1944 which also killed the town’s photographer and scores of others. Nobody had realised he was Jewish at the time as he was from Romania. During the raid he had been operating on a German officer, who survived. So much for a benevolent destiny.

Few Jews returned from Rome and Livorno after the war and the lack of a quorum for the synagogue in 1959 resulted in its closure.The roof  subsequently fell in followed by half of the edifice collapsing into the ravine. When I climbed in over the high gate in 1985 it was a picturesque, but sad ruin. By 1990 however it was completely restored and the ghetto converted into a museum – now much frequented by visitors, but nowhere near as evocative as in the ’80s.

The cemetery is not normally open to visitors, but Camera Etrusca is always allowed entrance, a contribution to the Synagogue fund is appreciated. Photographers always love this place, free to amble through its mournful silence among the rude forefathers of a vanished community lying under sentinal cypress,  the former inhabitants of the little Jerusalem.

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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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