The Sacro Bosco (“Sacred Grove”) of the Monsters is a monumental complex named after the many larger-than-life sculptures, some of them sculpted in the bedrock.

They seem to live silently in this huge and wild Garden and populate this predominantly barren landscape.

Nature and human artfacts, that is to say the wood and the mithological-allegorical figures carved from the rock, the rational world and a world of symbols merge together in this impressive, beautiful, dreamlike park! 💙

It is the work by the Duke Pier Francesco Orsini, called Vicino (1528–1588), a patron of the arts and mercenary who ruled over Bomarzo. The Park covers an area of ​​about 3 hectares, in a forest of conifers and deciduous trees.😍

This Park is very different from the other contemporary italian Renaissance gardens as the park of Bomarzo was intended not to please, but to astonish!!👁

Your lunch will be in a lakeside panoramic restaurant by the Bolsena lake, the biggest volcanic lake of Europe, well known for its clean and transparent water.

After lunch you will enjoy a stroll along the lanes of the lakeside village of Bolsena and admire the Monaldeschi stronghold, built in the timeframe which ranges from the 11th to the 14th century.

Bolsena is famous for the miracle happened in 1263, when a Bohemian priest, skeptical about the doctrine of transubstantiation (the conversion of the eucharistic bread and wine into the substance of the body and blood of Christ), was converted by the miraculous appearance of drops of blood on the Host he was consecrating at Mass on an altar in the crypt of the 11th-century Church of Santa Cristina. In the Vatican the miracle is commemorated by Raphael’s fresco “The Miracle at Bolsena” in the Papal Room of Eliodoro.

The underground basilica located under the Church of Santa Cristina and known as the “Grotto” is famous for its catacombs.

The Orvieto Cathedral was eventually built to commemorate the miracle of Bolsena and house the blood stained corporal of the doubtful priest.