Bomarzo is situated in the heart of Tuscia between the extreme north-eastern slopes of the Cimini mountains and the wide valley of the Tiber river, which marks the border with neighboring Umbria; of particular interest, beside the Church of Santa Maria Assunta and Santa Maria della Valle, is the Palazzo Orsini, a compendium of buildings dating from 1525 to 1583, with its complex structure that dominates the country. Inside, along with the Town Hall, stands the great hall frescoed by painters of the school of Pietro da Cortona.

The Church of the Risen Christ (located in the new part of the city) presents a series of contemporary paintings (oil on canvas) representing the Via Crucis, the work is by Felice Ludovisi from Viterbo, while the museum of sculpture, stored in a warehouse in the Orsini palace, houses more than one hundred Attilio Pierelli hyperspace sculptures, made from 1960 to today, including the Hypercube, the Cusp surface and T.E.S.T., the work that is awarded every three years to the author of the most important research in astrophysics by the “Marcel Grossman Meeting“.

Bruno Zevi wrote of the town of Bomarzo: «In Bomarzo the stage fiction is overwhelming; the observer can not cover it all because it is immersed in a gear sensations (…), that can be confusing, to overwhelm emotionally, engage in a dream world, absurd, playful and hedonistic (…)»

To visit, at a short distance, is the Park of Monsters, a monumental complex located at the foot of a real natural amphitheater. The architect and antiquarian Pirro Ligorio on commission from the Prince Pier Francesco Orsini designed and oversaw the construction, raising to the park to a natural system, in the mythological figures represented there, the kind of grotesque. The creation of the sculptures was probably entrusted to Simone Moschino. The Orsini called the park with the name of Sacred Forest and dedicated it to his wife, Giulia Farnese (not the eponymous mistress of Pope Alexander VI).

The plastics figures of the complex reveal Orsini’s preference for the open form, where the eye meets the apparently fortuitous visual and confirm his passion for artistic expressions from different backgrounds, unusual for Italian culture of the sixteenth century, which rank in advanced toward the Baroque. Among the figurative expressions, that make the Sacred Forest something unique in its genre are those who commit the greater sensitivity of the visitor: the Temple (of Doric style, octagonal, dedicated to his wife Giulia Farnese), the Mask (a monster with the most emblematic snub nose, hollow eyes and enormous mouth wide open, inside which there is provided a room), the Elephant in battle (which reveals a distinct oriental art reference), the Dragon fighting with greyhounds (obvious influences from Asia), the Donna Opulenta (with enormous proportions, holding up a pot on her head), Neptune (which supports the bare back wall behind the mammoth), the Cottage inclined (you feel contempt for the complacency of the limits of the rule), the Turtle (giant sculpture topped by a harmonious musical figure), the Giant (the forces have significant anatomical metrics), the Demonic mask (holding up the globe decorated by the heraldic symbols of the Orsini).