Montegabbione

Next on the agenda for today was a visit to La Scarzuola in Montegabbione. This was one of the places I was looking forward to visiting. I found it online and thought it was right up my alley with my love of quirky and different art and buildings.

It was quite a scary drive as the GPS took us down a long one way dirt road through the mountains, in the middle of nowhere. We were very surprised when we finally got there.

Architect, Tomaso Buzzi, acquired the 16th century monastery in 1956 with the grand plan of juxtaposing the “sacred city” of the monastery with his own “ideal city”. His style blends reality with surrealist architecture, incorporating structures and details from Classical to Medieval and even Renaissance architecture, with added elements such as stairways leading in multiple directions, general unbalance and disproportion, and monstrous and fantastical design elements.

The are also many reproductions, including the Arc de Triomphe, the Temple of Vesta and the Parthenon, which are mostly empty inside, save for stairways and inner bridges. Scattered randomly throughout the property are strange symbols and quotes, deeply personal to the artist himself.

After Tomaso’s death in 1981, his nephew Marco Solari continued to work on La Scarzuola, eventually completing the vision his uncle had for his ideal city.

Marco was the one running the tour today and it was all in Italian as there were no English tours available while we were in the area. I had read that if you are easily offended then these tours are not for you but as it was all in Italian we weren’t offended; just a bit baffled and bemused as arguments broke out between the host and the customers with quite a few choosing to leave before the tour had even started. Marco would switch between hysterical laughter and bouts of shouting and it was all very amusing and disconcerting.

Thankfully halfway round we started chatting to Marco’s offsider and discovered he was an ex-Aussie and has lived in Italy for the past 30 years. He gave us a brief mini tour in English which gave us more insight to the property. The story of its construction and design was very interesting.

This was certainly a place I was glad we could experience. I really enjoyed it. Brad, not so much as it really wasn’t his thing, but it was cerainly a unique experience, as was finding our way there and back to our accomodation. I am very thankful Brad drove all the way there for me.Read more