Tuscany’s Parc Guëll, sparks and colours among the Mediterranean scrub

Located 65 Km from the Poggio Cavallo Farm, the tarot garden is the Parc Guëll of Tuscany. A creative impulse similar to the one that inspired Gaudí in Barcelona created a surreal and dreamlike atmosphere. It is a magical world where the expression of architecture clashes with functional aims and merges with sculpture.

A walk through the Tarot Garden is a magical, enigmatic experience that takes you into the mind of artist Niki de Saint Phalle and through her monuments scattered on her hill, which was also his private home. The buildings emerging from the Mediterranean scrub are clad in colourful paint, ceramics, mosaics and mirrors. Monsters, giant women, popes, prophets, animals, all of the tarots that the artist had in mind, are scattered on the hill slopes as if someone had thrown a deck of cards into the wind.

The technique is the same made famous by Gaudí: trencadís, which uses shards of broken ceramics cemented together. The artist made no mystery of how shocked and inspired she was by Gaudí's magical Parc Guëll.

Fun trivia: not everyone knows that her dream came true thanks also to her friendship with Marella Agnelli (the wife of Gianni Agnelli, owner of FIAT) who made available the lot of land where she could create and erect the sculptures. The artist worked at this huge project in the 1980-1998 period, in addition to her many other projects in Japan and California.

Don't miss the interiors of Niki's house, covered with millions of mirror fragments. Not far from Capalbio.

The admission ticket is not cheap. However, at the behest of the founder visitors are granted free admission on the first Saturday of November, December, January, February and March, from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Groups of at least 25 people are granted at reduced rate if they book at least 10 days in advance.

How to get there

"The Tarot Garden is not my own garden, it belongs to everyone who helped me finish it. I am the architect of this garden. I imposed my vision because I could not have done otherwise.

This garden was made with difficulty, with love, with crazy enthusiasm, with obsession and, more than anything else, with faith. Nothing and no one could have stopped me. As in all fairy tales, along the way in search of treasure I came across dragons, witches, wizards and the Angel of Temperance."

Niki de Saint Phalle