Bomarzo is known for a garden. Vicino Orsini — Pier Francesco, born in 1528 — was a condottiero and a patron of the arts, greatly devoted to his wife Giulia Farnese, and when she died he had this made at the foot of what is a genuine natural amphitheatre: the Sacro Bosco, which everyone calls the park of the monsters. The design is attributed to Pirro Ligorio. The park was intended not to please, but to astonish, and its symbolism is deliberately obscure: a war elephant of Hannibal's crushing a Roman legionary, a Ceres lying on the bare ground with a vase of the fruits of the earth on her head, monstrous and mythological animals, some carved straight out of the living rock. The statues seem strewn about without a plan, and the only explanation the place offers is cut into an obelisk: «sol per sfogare il Core», only to give the heart relief. Beside the sculptures, enigmatic verses by Annibale Caro, by Bitussi and by Cristoforo Madruzzo were carved into the stone, and some are worn away today. Vicino Orsini died in 1588. The Argentine writer Manuel Mujica Lainez made a closely documented historical portrait of it in his novel Bomarzo.
The name comes from Polymartium, first mentioned in Paul the Deacon's history of the Lombards; read as polis martium, the city of Mars, it would suggest a Roman origin, but no archaeological evidence of a Roman city has been found so far — what has been found is a Roman brick factory nearby, which may have belonged to Domitia Calvilla, the mother of Marcus Aurelius. In 739 king Liutprand took Bomarzo from the Roman duchy together with Amelia, Orte and Blera. In 1298 the place was sold to Viterbo, and then enfeoffed to the Orsini, who held it until 1646; one of them, Corradino, fell out badly with the people of Bomarzo, bringing in new taxes and having the communal magistrates imprisoned. Palazzo Orsini still dominates the village and houses the town hall, with a hall frescoed by painters of Pietro da Cortona's school. Outside the built-up area stands the Etruscan pyramid, and inside the Monte Casoli reserve a perfectly preserved medieval church, which people reach once a year, on Easter Monday, walking there from the village. In 1942 Bomarzo gave up the hamlet of Chia to Soriano nel Cimino.
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📅 Every year, on 24 April, with the Palio on 25 April
On 24 April Bomarzo celebrates its patron Saint Anselm the bishop and on the 25th the Palio di Sant'Anselmo is run between the five districts, with the Renaissance historical procession.
A white wine carved into Etruscan tufa history, toasted by Garibaldi's Thousand: Orvieto has held Denominazione di Origine Controllata status since 1971.
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The closest destinations covered by our editors, with straight-line distance.
Outside Bomarzo, but an easy day trip away.
