Beautiful design and incredible works of art are a key part of Italy’s cultural heritage but while everyone knows this includes paintings, sculptures, buildings, objects, clothes, and more, some forget that garden design is a key element. Italy’s history of garden design is rich and fascinating and has left us with some truly extraordinary and magical gardens to visit all throughout the country. Varying from pretty and manicured palace gardens, to diverse and educational botanic gardens at universities, to gems specialising in one sort of bloom or tree or plant and presenting a gorgeous array, to flights of fancy featuring interesting planting interacting with wonderful sculptural works, to welcoming parks where generations can gather for fun and excitement; there are all sorts of wonderful gardens in Italy. One of the most unique of all, however, has to be the Labirinto Della Masone, an astonishing and magical garden that is a must-see for all those who find a villa in Emilia Romagna and are interested in such things!
Created by Franco Maria Ricci, an Italian graphic designer, editor, and designer, this extraordinary bamboo maze spreads out over an astounding seven hectares and follows a path that is 3km long in total. Ricci had been long fascinated by mazes and he first dreamed of building one all the way back in the eighties. Following a meeting and collaboration with Jorge Luis Borges, the famous Argentine writer who directed the series La Biblioteca di Babele for Ricci’s publishing house, the idea to make a labyrinth of his own came to Ricci.
