Lubertadventure: Il Giardino di Daniel Spoerri

Yesterday we went to visit “Il Giardino di Daniel Spoerri” about 80 km south of Sienna in Tuscany.

At the beginning of the Nineties the Swiss Artist Daniel Spoerri started to establish a sculpture garden, which has now been open to the public since 1997 and can be visited from Easter until October. At present, there are 103 installations by 50 artists in an area of about 16 hectares

“Il Giardino di Daniel Spoerri” is an officially accepted foundation.

The name, “Il Giardino”, comes from its geographical position. On old maps the place is called “Il Paradiso” - a “Garden of Eden”, and from the moment we parked the car, it was a tossup as to whether the scenery or the artistic endeavour was the more spectacular.

We had a quick lunch and were informed that it takes about four hours to properly walk through all of the gardens. So we planned a two hour approach as we promised to go see Emilio – Sandro's son, play soccer (il calcio) in Archidosso later that afternoon.

The first thing that struck us was that all of the fenceposts had large green glass flagons – demijohns- overturned on them, giving them the appearance of alien heads. This impression deepened as we approached one of the most well-known sculpture installations, a hundred stone geese being herded by three huge herders playing snare drums. The drovers had the look of Orcs or rather the haunted, hollow look of giant Ringwraiths.

I will let the pictures speak for themselves.