This place is dreamlike, magical, steeped in history and culture: it is La Scarzuola, city of dreams, also called “Ideal city” by its designer, the Milanese architect Tomaso Buzzi. This eccentric and surreal architectural ensemble is located in the rural hamlet of Montegiove, in the municipality of Montegabbione, in the province of Terni, in Umbria (Italy).
It was in 1957 that Tomaso Buzzi acquired this site where there was a convent, then partly in ruins, and where, as an article in “M le magazine du Monde” tells us, Saint Francis of Assisi would have lived, eight hundred and forty years earlier, in a shelter made of marshy plants named scarza. Plant that inspired the name Scarzuola. The architect will spend the rest of his life renovating this convent and building a large architectural ensemble made up of buildings and amphitheatres of various sizes, largely reusing the stones from the ruined parts of the old convent.
Built between 1958 and 1978, La Scarzuola is made up of seven theaters surrounded by land with multiple caves and pools, and topped by an “acropolis” made up of seven buildings, inspired by important architectural references: the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Parthenon, the Temple of Vesta, the Tower of the Winds, the Clock Tower of Mantua and the Pyramid. We also recognize in the tuff of the buildings of the Ideal City forms borrowed from the Villa Adriana, built in the 2nd century near Rome, as well as from the neighboring Villa d’Este, a masterpiece of Italian architecture of the Seicento, as underlined by the article in “M le magazine du Monde”. Tomaso Buzzi also built many statues and structures, including an evocation of the Tower of Babel to represent the different ages of life.
When he died in 1981, leaving his work unfinished, it was his nephew, Marco Solari, who finished the work, based on sketches and drawings left by the master. This heir is now the owner, conservator and caretaker of the park.