Tarot Garden in Capalbio is an enchanted and magical place. An artistic park where you can admire the statues conceived and designed by the artist Niki de Saint Phalle in the seventies.
Tarot Garden is a magical place
Tarot Garden, in Capalbio in the heart of Maremma in the province of Grosseto, is an enchanted place worth visiting. It’s the fruit of the imagination and inspiration of the French artist Niki de Saint Phalle, who began its construction in 1977. The park is made up of twenty-two sculptures in concrete and metal. Each of them is inspired by the figures of the tarot and is covered with glass, mirrors, colored ceramic shards. It’s a real tourist attraction, a phantasmagoric place.
The figures are immersed in the wild and evocative nature of the Garavicchio hill. Entering the garden is like being immersed in a magical and fantastic place. The statues are large in size. Each proposing the tarot does so by realizing an idea and expressing a precise meaning. Each sculpture, then, is the result of the collaboration of various local and international workers. The parts of some works, in fact, were made in Paris.
The park inspired by Gaudì
Niki de Saint Phalle for the realization of the Tarot Garden was inspired when he visited Spain. In Barcelona, in fact, he was struck by the visit to the Parc Güell by Antoni Gaudì. The Catalan architect, in his intent to re-propose a nineteenth-century utopian “garden city”, has created a place where nature and architecture blend skillfully. De Saint Phalle impressed by this perfect mixture, permeated with different and harmonious colors and shapes, in the seventies proposed the idea of creating a large garden to the Caracciolo family, owners of the land.
The artist, drawing inspiration from the major and minor arcana over the course of 17 years, thanks to artisans and workers, has the models designed by him reproduced by enlarging them. The result is twenty-two works that still fascinate the public after many years. Everything is skillfully connected and harmonized with the surrounding nature. The bishop, Temperance, Adam and Eve (The Choice), The World, The Hermit, The Oracle, Death, The Devil and the Hanged Man, all tarot cards are present in the park. The priestess pays homage to another magical Italian place, the Parco dei Mostri di Bomarzo.
Timetables and information on the reservation park and ticket price can be found on nikidesaintphalle.com official website.
