Author Linda Lappin chooses 5 titles to transport to BOMARZO

26th October 2024

Author Linda Lappin chooses 5 titles to transport to BOMARZO

Ninety minutes north of Rome in the obscure village of Bomarzo, stands a vast, eerie sculpture garden – the Park of Monsters, aka the Sacred Grove, created in the mid 16^th century by Duke Pierfrancesco Orsini – known to his friends as Vicino.  Populated by giant statues and bizarre structures carved from enormous boulders springing straight from the ground, the Park of Monsters is one of Italy’s weirdest artworks.  No one knows for sure who designed and carved the sculptures – though different theories attribute them to various artists of the period. Some claim its surreal statues convey an alchemical formula or pertain to the Eleusinian mysteries of Ancient Greece, with the statues of Persephone and Hades as the central figures. Others claim that it represents visions from Vicino’s nightmares, or symbolic illustrations of his important life events. Its most iconic sculpture is the Hell Mouth, a cavern hollowed out in the hillside which shows a monster’s gaping mouth.

Photo: Great Gardens of the World

After Vicino’s death, the Park of Monsters dwindled in collective memory, as the garden and its sculptures became overgrown. Locally known as a spooky, sinister place, its stone creatures were rumored to come alive at night. Its rediscovery in the twentieth century is partly thanks to Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalì who visited the park in 1948 and captured images on film of its freakish sculptures. In the 1950s, the new owners began to clear the park of centuries of moss, underbrush, and debris and opened it to the public.  You come away deeply puzzled, sometimes disconcerted by a visit to this place. The statues obviously mean something, convey something – but what? Why did Vicino create such a strange menagerie? And who can solve the riddle?

 Naturally, such an enchanted if peculiar place makes a perfect setting for fiction – and in recent years, a handful of novels with Bomarzo as their setting  have appeared, all of which attempt to solve the mystery at the heart of this enigmatic garden.  Here are five novels, including one of my own, which will take you wandering through its unsettling meanders.

Bomarzo by Manuel Mujica Lainez (currently out of print)

Simon & Schuster, first English translation 1968

(translator’s name not given)

Genre: historical fiction, historical fantasy

All Bomarzo novels may trace their lineage back to this classic by the Argentinian writer,  Manuel Mujica Lainez, a contemporary of Jorge Luis Borges, who stumbled upon the Bomarzo Park of Monsters in 1958. This phantasmagoric tale is told from the perspective of the park’s creator, Vicino Orsini, and draws on the Renaissance obsession for alchemy, magic, and astrology. In Lainez’s telling, Vicino is a tormented hunchback, bullied by his family, driven by the lust for power who destroys his own brothers and grabs his father’s title. Although he mingles with the greatest minds and artists of his era, he is tortured and isolated, and also – it turns out –immortal, and a time traveler. He decides to create a monument to his own life – and thus was born the Park of Monsters, a projection of his hallucinatory solitude. The Renaissance with all its rich pageantry is brought to life in Lainez’s narrative: battles, violence, heresies, coronations with a cast of popes, demonologists, artists, courtesans, alchemists, and emperors who flit  through the story.  The book inspired Alberto Ginastera’s opera: Bomarzo, for which Lainez wrote the libretto. Out of print now, you’ll find it in libraries, and used book stores. At 537 pages, it is a dense, slow-going, but rewarding read.

Dante’s Garden: Magic and Mystery in Bomarzo by Teresa Cutler-Broyles

Inkwell International 2017, 2024

Genre: historical fantasy

Cutler-Broyles picks up some of Lainez’s  threads in her enchanting Dante’s Garden –Frank,

fanatic book collector,  discovers a note which seems to be addressed to him hidden in a rare edition of Dante’s Divina Commedia, which he has traveled to Italy to purchase. While visiting Bomarzo, with book in hand, he is caught in a thunderstorm, and taking shelter in the Hell Mouth, falls through time. Waking up in 1565, as a pagan pageant is in full swing in the garden, he is rescued by the lovely Lucrezia, an artist’s model, and the artist Pyrrho Ligorio, who has been summoned to Bomarzo to help Vicino in the creation of his park. Frank’s new friends are anxious to find a way to return Frank to his own time – with the help of Renaissance magic and old books. In the meantime, however, Lucrezia and Frank fall deeply in love. But there’s another problem, too:  the Church doesn’t approve of the pagan celebrations and alchemical research going on in Bomarzo, which may be a front for political opposition. If they are caught, the whole crew – including Frank – might be burned at the stake for heresy. A delightful read interweaving historical research with occult fantasy and a bittersweet love story.

Michelangelo’s Ghost by Gigi Pandian

Henery Press, 2016

Genre: International Mystery & Crime

USA Today bestselling author, Gigi Pandian found inspiration for her novel Michelangelo’s Ghost in local myths about the Park of Monsters : the old tale that the statues guard a treasure and come to life at night.  The latter may be explained by the fact that some of the sculptures were once – perhaps– equipped with devices that allowed them to produce sound – to roar in the night, a detail deftly worked by the author into her suspenseful story.

When sleuth Jaya Jones’ professor dies in mysterious circumstances, she sets off for Italy from San Francisco to investigate. At the time of his death, the professor had discovered manuscripts describing a treasure hidden in the Bomarzo Park of Monsters. One secret the park conceals is a lost artwork connecting India to the Italian Renaissance. Intriguing, cross-cultural connections are one of the delights of Pandian’s cozy but vivid mysteries. In Michelangelo’s Ghost, a modern day killer and jewel thief hides behind the 500 year old ghost. Reality overshadows myth and magic, offering a rational explanation for most, but not all, the mysteries. Pandian’s sprightly prose celebrates the pleasures of Italian painting, food, and landscape. The light touch, swift pace, and verve maintained throughout the novel disguise the deeper thought and scholarship underpinning the story, which like the stage props of a conjurer, make the magic happen.

Signatures in Stone A Bomarzo Mystery by Linda Lappin

Pleasure Boat Studio, 2013, 2023

Genre: Gothic Mystery, Dark

Winner, Daphne Du Maurier Award for Mystery & Suspense, 2013

 In this gothic mystery,  four misfits, Daphne, a writer of occult mysteries, Nigel, her aristocratic publisher,  Clive a wannebe painter, and Finestone, an academic, meet in Italy in 1928 in a rundown villa appended to the park, where the sculptures, overgrown for years, are being rediscovered.  At the center of the garden stands Persephone, central icon of the Eleusinian mysteries of Ancient Greece, which led seekers on a journey to self-knowledge and rebirth. Daphne believes that signs and signatures all around us reveal the future and uncover hidden truths. When a shocking murder happens in the park, she is the prime suspect, and must learn to read the signs scattered there, embodied in the grotesque statues, which she believes transmit to visitors the dark emotions of the artist who made them.

To discover the murderer’s identity,  she will pass through the Hell Mouth and face her own demons, and in doing so  will also crack the code of the Monster Park – the secret message planted there by its creator.  Library Journal says  “Moody romantic prose Daphne Du Maurier might have written.”

In the Garden of Monsters by Crystal King

Mira Books, 2024

Genre: Historical Fantasy

In her latest novel, acclaimed food writer, Crystal King,  brings together a group of artists, including Salvatore Dali’, in a dilapidated villa near the Garden of Monsters– where Julia, a young American art student, will be posing for the Spanish painter.  Julia suffers from amnesia – she can’t remember where she is from or how she came to live in Rome. She accepts Dali’s invitation to Bomarzo on a hunch that she’ll discover something more about herself. Attending the eccentric group of artists are several mysterious servants who look after the park and their mysterious host, the suave Ignazio to whom Julia is irresistibly drawn. Ignazio prepares exquisite meals for his guests – many of his delicacies contain pomegranate grains, which he seeks in many ways to make Julia eat but which she manages to resist until… A whimsical and sensual retelling of the myth of Persephone and Hades with some luscious food you’ll dream about. For Goodreads: In the Garden of Monsters is the most anticipated historical fiction book of fall 2024.

Linda Lappin

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