It’s called the Garden of Marvels, most probably because it never ceases to surprise. Just like life, really. This private garden – accessible upon request – is, actually, a sort of life story. The story of the architect who designed it, Paolo Portoghesi, and his wife, Giovanna Massobrio. It is in the province of Viterbo and is, in many ways, a synopsis of their lives, two lives revolving around their love for animals – all living freely in the garden – memories of their travels together, buildings that have appeared to be halfway between dreamlike and symbolic and beautiful, centuries-old plants.

Building the Garden of Marvels began in 1990 when signor Portoghesi and his wife started purchasing lots of land around their house in Calcata, in the province of Viterbo, in the heart of an area called the Tuscia, north of Rome.

Paolo Portoghesi was a very important architect who practised in the field of Italian post-modernism. However, his so-called “anti-star” status was, probably above all else, even more significant. He was a lover of the Renaissance, and he was also a landscape designer and his most interesting project in this latter profession was the park surrounding his house in the Tuscia area near Viterbo in northern Lazio.

This garden was elected as the most beautiful garden in Italy in both 2017 and 2023 (the year that Paolo Portoghesi passed away) and it lies in the medieval village of Calcata, overlooking the Treja Valley. Such recognition was awarded last year on account of its “modelling of space according to a renewed alliance between Man and Nature”, from which unforeseeable harmonies have been created.

Paolo Portoghesi claimed that “architects were almost sick with – and hellbent on – design projects. They want to change the world. I always preferred the idea of designing a garden. And in consideration of the fact that it was realised at different moments in time, it was by pure necessity created as a story. It was made up of memories and journeys as well as experiences from afar and experiences that were closer to home”. And so, strolling through the garden, apart from monstruous-looking structures that bring Bomarzo to mind, and apart from centuries-old olive trees that look like great statues and that are indeed called by the names of great sculptors (Bernini, Borromini, Brancusi, Michelangelo, Moore and Rodin), there are also lecterns adorned with literary or philosophical thoughts that have all been inspired by the context in which they are to be found.

Portoghesi’s Garden of Marvels possesses a traditional layout, inspired by the Villa Gamberaia in Florence. It has a star-shaped design and pointed corners that create a clear-cut contrast with its lush vegetation, the very same as all the greenery that may be found in the Treja Valley and throughout this northern part of Lazio. The most common plants are oaks, evergreen holm oaks and cypresses.

The nature here is wild and free to grow where it desires. It is encouraged to enter into dialogue with Portoghesi’s architectural elements, with flights of steps, with glades, with loggias and with niches. There is also a round library in which the family’s collection of books is to be found as well as mementos from the couple’s trips around the world.
Paolo Portoghesi’s Garden of Marvels is a living organism made up of many single parts, all in some way independent from one another, some parts a little older, some parts more recent, but yet in a certain sense also inter-dependent, not wholly free of one another. This is the only way that they may “function”. Just like life, as a matter of fact. Where there is harmony, everything functions, everything works better.