While the famous cities of Italy tend to be the most popular destinations among international travellers, there are also other gems worth exploring off the beaten track: Italy's contemporary gardens.
Labirinto della Masone, a bamboo maze which was opened in 2015 is located in Fontanellato, near Parma.
The unusual landscape was created by Italian art publisher and designer Franco Maria Ricci, well-known for his eponymous magazine FMR, a Milan-based bi-monthly art title published in Italian, English, German, French and Spanish for over 27 years.
Franco Maria Ricci explained he first thought about building a labyrinth in the 1980s, after meeting Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges, who collaborated with Ricci’s publishing house to direct La Biblioteca di Babele.
"I have talked about labyrinths all my life, with Italo Calvino, with Roland Barthes, with Borges," Ricci said in a 2010 interview with Il Venerdì di Repubblica. "He [Borges] was obsessed by them, he often mentions them in his short stories, as in 'Theme of the Traitor and the Hero,' on which Bernardo Bertolucci based his 'The Spider's Stratagem.'"
"Borges was a guest at my house for twenty days, in the 1980s, and it was then I started to think about building a real labyrinth."
As garden designer Carlo Gabriele explains to SBS Italian, Labirinto della Masone is made of over 200,000 bamboo trees of different species.
Labirinto della Masone Source: Flickr/Patrizia Peruzzini CC BY 2.0
"Visiting the Labirinto is a marvellous experience," says Carlo Gabriele.
The park also has spaces hosting Franco Maria Ricci’s art collection which includes about 500 works of art ranging from the 16th to the 20th century, as well as temporary exhibitions.
As Carlo Gabriele explains, visiting the Labirinto is a worthwhile experience and is easy to add to an Italian itinerary, "because the area where it was created has plenty to offer in terms of art, history and food traditions."
Another garden worth visiting, albeit on a much smaller scale, is the Giardino delle Iris di Trebecco, located in the Bergamo region.
It's host to the biggest collection of bearded irises in the world.
"Irises are called warrior plants because they don't need too much attention," says Carlo Gabriele.
The garden is lovingly tended by Cristina Mostosi, who inherited it from her father Luigi. Luigi has has almost 30 new hybrid breeds of irises registered with the American Iris Society over the years.
Cristina realised the value of the garden when she was invited to speak at the Festival dei Giardini Veneziani to present her conservation project.
Cristina Mostosi will be opening the garden in the Italian Spring by appointment, and has invited in particular any painters who would be interested in portraying the flowers. The garden is located 25 km from Bergamo in a Medieval village.
In Italy there are of course many more gardens: if you want to find out which you can visit next time you travel to Italy you can explore the website Grandi Giardini Italiani, a data base of gardens open to the public.
Facebook post by Cristina Mostosi Source: Facebook
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