In the mid-sixteenth century Vicino Orsini, a soldier-nobleman, turned a wooded valley below his castle into a garden meant to astonish rather than please. Giant figures rise from the rock, among them a screaming stone mouth carved with the words Ogni pensiero vola, all thoughts fly.
Nearby is a house that leans at a dizzying angle. Tradition links the project to the death of his wife, Giulia Farnese, though the symbolism is deliberately hard to read. The grove was forgotten for centuries, then drew Salvador Dalí and, in the 1970s, a restoration by the Bettini family. The park is an easy short trip from Viterbo or Rome.
