Linda Lappin

North of Rome, along the Via Cassia, lies a pocket of woodlands and wild ravines called Tuscia. During the 16th century, many noble Roman families built their summer residences here in the verdant Cimini Hills outlying the town of Viterbo. An esoteric itinerary connects three of these residences, each of which houses some of the most curious stonework produced by the Italian Renaissance: the fountains of Villa Lante in Bagnaia (1568-78), the Sacred Wood of Bomarzo (1552-1570), and the Papacqua Fountain in Soriano nel Cimino (1561).

Located within a few miles of each other, these sculptural composites are believed to have been designed by the same artists, including, possibly, Jacopo Vignola (1507-1573), and carved by the same craftsmen. The noblemen who commissioned them: Cardinal Giovan Francesco Gambara, Duke Vicino Orsini, and Cardinal Cristoforo Madruzzo, were neighbors, friends and, as a recent conspiracy theory holds, members of a neo-pagan society forced to go underground to avoid persecution. The orgiastic display of goddesses and satyrs sculpted in their gardens and fountains may be more than just a pagan dream in stone: these statues may represent pagan rituals or even fragments of an alchemical formula, testimony to the occult society to which these men may have belonged. Aspiring alchemists have interpreted them as stations along a journey of self-initiation that spiritual seekers in all eras may undertake, which is why I have come today on a pagan pilgrimage in Tuscia.

Driving down from Florence, I note the change in terrain after passing Orvieto. The rounded hills of Umbria, with their tidy vineyards, give way to the peculiar geological formation of Tuscia where erosion caused by dozens of streams feeding into the Tiber valley has slashed the landscape with deep chasms. Atop the cliffs are clustered medieval hamlets built of grey volcanic rock. Exiting the superhighway, I follow a winding road to Villa Lante where, on this summer morning, I am the only visitor.

The name “Villa” is misleading. No imposing villa was ever constructed here. Cardinal Gambara is said to have spent all his money on his garden, begun in 1568. He and his guests lodged in two small pavilions. Despite these modest accommodations, Villa Lante corresponds to the Renaissance ideal of a summer residence intended as a place of restoration through “garden magic.”

According to the architectural conventions of the period, every garden should evoke the Eternal Spring of the golden age. It should have a “bosco,” or wild area, and a landscaped area with fountains and statues which were to be arranged in a carefully studied scheme. The iconography of this scheme might include references to the owner’s name, career, coat-of-arms, or even to his horoscope. This was not done merely for aesthetic pleasure. It was believed that the proper placement of plants, fountains, and statues in harmony with the principles of astrology could influence human destiny. To visit such a garden was to interact with its magic on many levels, to undergo a transformation by means of enchantment in which all the senses participated.

Stepping inside the gates of Villa Lante, I am ensnared in a labyrinth of boxwood hedges. Their crisp foliage unleashes a balsamic scent as I wander through the coils all leading nowhere. For Cardinal Gambara, this seductive maze symbolized the imprisoning power of reason from which visitors were urged to escape by tackling the steep slopes leading straight up from the labyrinth. Here, in parterres arranged in tiers, I am met on every level with lush explosions of hydrangeas sprouting at the roots of century-old plane trees. Every level has its fountain, but the main one is the giant crayfish—Gambara’s heraldic symbol—planted midway up the slope, from which, between potent claws, gushes a narrow stream of water feeding all the fountains below.

This sparkling column of water is the quester’s guiding thread. By following it upwards, I am led to the source at the very top where a spring spurts out of the hillside through an Etruscan gorgon’s lips. In Gambara’s occult itinerary, once you have reached this spot you have returned to a state of grace enjoyed by human beings before the fall of man.

The first phase of my pilgrimage is complete. I have escaped from the labyrinth, and have been purified by the waters of life, but in order to proceed along the road to inner wisdom, I must now descend as low as I have just ascended. The next phase will take me to Bomarzo where I will descend into Vicino Orsini’s personal vision of hell, a park he named “the Sacred Wood.”

Recent weather conditions have contributed to making my visit an ordeal, as Vicino intended it to be. The narrow road to the park has been washed out by rainstorms, so I continue on foot. Like Villa Lante, the Sacred Wood defies the conventions of its time by not being placed in proximity to a villa or palace. Set midway down a gorge, distant from the Orsini Castle up in the town, it was not meant to be an embellishment to a princely home but an “experience” unto itself.

Near the entrance, a sphinx announces the enigmatic nature of this place. Further ahead, Cerebus, the three-headed guard dog of Hades, marks the threshold of the Underworld. In Villa Lante, the atmosphere shimmered with sunlight reflected on water in the dappled shade of enormous trees, but here it is gloomy; the park is in perennial shadow. Along twisting paths, I encounter bizarre creatures randomly carved from outcroppings of rock: giants in combat, an elephant trampling a soldier; a cave with gaping mouth, a lascivious mermaid. Blistered with lichen, half- hidden by ferns, these statues of grey tufa seem to have sprung up from the earth, shaken free by a cataclysm. Cryptic inscriptions throughout the park inform us that Vicino intended visitors to be shocked and stupefied by them.

After aimless wandering, I reach the center of the wood where two figures stand in stark relief: a paunchy Pluto, king of the Underworld, frowning from a mossy fountainhead, and Persephone, goddess of springtime, Pluto’s captive wife, lounging opposite. They hold the key to the mystery of Bomarzo, for they invite the visitor to re-enact a myth: Cybele’s search to rescue her daughter, Persephone, from the Underworld. In ancient religious rites, Persephone’s release from Hades symbolized the soul’s liberation, a second birth. By rambling through this park in Cybele’s footsteps, I have, according to Vicino’s secret plan, been symbolically reborn.

In Vicino’s “Sacred Wood” Persephone may be freed from the Underworld only after the seeker has lost his way in the forest, confronting sculpted images of terror, lust, and rage at every turn. These grotesque statues represent the darker side of the human psyche which must be transformed through the alchemical process before gold can be made, or spiritual regeneration attained.

An investigation of the woods outside the park sheds further light on the name Vicino chose for this place. The Sacred Wood borders an area known today as “Le Madonnelle,” hallowed by the Etruscans, later adopted as a sanctuary by the medieval cult of Mary. Climbing those slopes, I find Etruscan altars and grottos scattered amid the trees. The most impressive is a huge, cubic altar, perfectly oriented to the four points of the compass, where Etruscan priests once invoked woodland spirits. By enclosing part of this terrain and populating it with pagan figures, Vicino asserted his pagan affiliations and returned a corner of his estate to its previous gods.

Tomes have been written to explain how Renaissance noblemen like Vicino Orsini reconciled their Christian faith with their infatuation for pagan gods. Sublimely subversive among those gods was Pan, celebrated in an erotic, mysterious, and little-known sculpture of the period, the Papacqua fountain in the hill town of Soriano nel Cimino, the last stop in my journey.

Commissioned in 1561 by Cardinal Madruzzo for his palace, these twin fountains represent the cardinal’s double vision of the world. On one wall, Moses, sculpted in the fashion of the times, strikes a desert rock with his rod to release a jet of water. On the other, an Etruscan faun lies with her babies on a writhing mound of serpents and snails while a satyr, in an excited state, gazes down in rapture. The whole teeming spectacle is held up by Pan, god of Nature.

The life-giving water bubbling up in both fountains stems from the same mountain spring, but has been channeled through two separate faiths: the pagan, in which Pan and the Mother Goddess reign supreme, and the Judaeo-Christian heritage. In the concluding phase of initiation, the seeker is asked to unite these opposites, penetrate the outer forms and sip the water directly from its source.

I take a paper cup from my knapsack, fill it to the brim. Lifting it high, I toast Moses, Pan, and the Mother Goddess, thanking them for the wisdom they have conceded on this alchemical tour of Tuscia.