(Mis)understanding Bomarzo: the Sacro Bosco between history and myth

... Having got off the train at Attigliano-Bomarzo (it was 6:20 am), we discovered that Bomarzo was connected to the railway station in quite a primitive way. In fact, it was necessary first to use a ferry; one had to traverse an impassible marshy area to reach it and then to walk for 6 km on foot along a poorly maintained horse track. The town appeared to us clinging to the ridge of a rock dominated by the castle (one of the Orsini castles), which now houses the municipal offices. In a small valley below the town we found, rising on a plateau, the temple that we were looking for, from which point on one could discern some colossal statues that compelled us to make a quick reconnaissance of the area. The sight of the whole architectural ensemble, half-concealed by shrubbery, confounded our vision, astounded us, and made us forget the purpose of our journey. When, at 3 pm, we had to leave the area to avail of the ferry (which operated only until sunset), a decision had already matured among us. We no longer wanted to limit our research to the temple, but to include the whole architectural ensemble in an attempt to capture its overall design, which the villa’s ingenious creator (for, indeed, we were dealing with the remains of the former Villa Orsini at Bomarzo) had used as the basis for his project. Monsters, fountains, nymphaea, and the strange leaning house, which seemed as though it was trying to regain equilibrium, captivated our imagination and compelled us to master the language of these monuments, making them the object of our study. A realization of this desire turned out anything but easy. In fact, time and human actions cut the binding thread that had connected different pieces and imposed on us research tasks that ranged from excavations to interpreting shapeless ruins that emerged from the earth. (The greatest damage seems to have been caused by treasure-hunters attracted by the hoard that, according to legend, lay hidden in the area.) Besides, the distance from Rome imposed on us considerable material costs. A great difficulty we faced was that vast amount of work had to be carried out in the uneven terrain full of scrubs and rocky outcroppings, which time and again made our operations very hard. We managed all along; and, initially by using steps and then with the help of a tachymeter [a surveying instrument for measuring distances], produced the first plan of the villa. With accurate measurements, we captured the dimensions of the monsters and every part of the temple. (In the latter’s case, for the sake of precision, we even had to hoist ourselves precariously to the cupola.) And yet, all along, we still could not find the binding thread connecting various pieces, which, for this reason, appeared to us sadly isolated from each another in space. We decided to move in and live on site. The ‘leaning house’ offered us a hard and cold, almost hostile, dwelling, but hardly anything else in its state of abandonment. It could not even give us the comforts of being a shelter from the rain; the cold and the wind were given full rein. We were forced to prepare the same meals out in the open, making daily trips to the town to fetch food, water, or kerosene, on which we had to rely to refill the gasoline lamp that we had brought with us in the vain hope of obtaining the right kind of fuel onsite.