It’s a labyrinthine citadel more surreal than even the weirdest of Fellini sets. “La Scarzuola” is a modern wannabe-Utopian estate imagined by one man and built amongst the pointy trees of Italy’s Montegabbione in the 1950s. This esoteric wonderland and its elaborate surrealist structures are awaiting your visit…
Echoing the dreamlike worlds of Dali and M.C. Escher, this empty city of stone has its own Acropolis, an Arc de Triomphe, a Temple of Vesta, a Parthenon and endless grottos, stairways and bridges. Tread on these ancient grounds, and you walk the actual blueprint of signor Tomaso Buzzi’s life. The Milanese architect fell in love with the site in the 1950s, when it was just the shell of a 16th century Franciscan monastery. He took it right off the market, and started mapping out his ideal mini-city…
He was born in 1900, and lived through nearly all of the 20th century. Envisaged as a theatrical machine, at La Scarzuola, visitors were meant to feel the high and lows of Buzzi’s life as he engraved them on the landscape; from towering female torsos and whimsical moons, to stone eyes that pop out of nowhere to send shivers down your spine.
“Worldliness, Elegance, Pleasures (including Vices, Wealth, and Powers, etc.) [are all present],” wrote Buzzi, “However, I have made room for oasis of recollection, of study, of work, of music and silence, of Greatness and Misery, of social life and of eremitical life, of contemplation in solitude, reign of Fantasy, of Fables, of Myths, Echoes and Reflections out of time and from space because everyone can find echoes of much past and notes of the future.”
You could sift through the various symbols and spiritual meanings of each corner, but the best way to tour la Scarzuola is by letting your instincts guide you up its mini “Tower of Babel”, or play Narcissus beside its green little lake.
He proclaimed it, “an autobiography in stone” where all the pleasures and vices of his life could mingle in one mind-boggling place. If you’ve ever read John Fowles’ cult 1965 book, The Magus, in which an young man gets caught up in a game of esoteric mind-trickery at a Mediterranean magician’s house, you’ll understand exactly why la Scarzuola seems like it could’ve jumped right off its pages…
These days, the future of estate and its unfinished blueprints — our torso, after all, needs a head — are in the hands of Buzzi’s nephew, Marco Solari. “Peppering his rapid-fire, eccentric-at-times-bordering-on-bizarre presentation with his contagious cackle,” said another visitor, Rebecca, “Solari weaves a story of art and architecture with one of magic and miracle…leaving some incredulous, and some—like myself—simply charmed.”
“If it were anywhere else,” said another visitor, Marco, “It would be a landmark. But its location has hid it form the world.” Or at least, from those who aren’t curious enough to find it.
