Sacro Bosco historical timeline

Last updated on October 8, 2026

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1552 The garden is made, on the operator's own dating. It is commissioned by Pier Francesco Orsini, called Vicino, a condottiero and patron of the arts, after the death of his wife Giulia Farnese -- the great-niece, not the Giulia Farnese who was Alexander VI's mistress. The design is attributed to Pirro Ligorio and the sculpture to Simone Moschino.
1564 Annibal Caro writes the first of the allusive Italian verses cut into the stone beside the figures. Bitussi and Cardinal Cristoforo Madruzzo add others. Several will erode past reading, taking the garden's own account of itself with them.
19th century The garden becomes overgrown and neglected, and stays that way deep into the twentieth -- the condition in which almost every surviving early photograph shows it.
1950s Salvador Dalí makes a short film about the park and paints a work based on it. The attention that follows is what ends the neglect.
1970s The Bettini family carries out a restoration programme lasting through the decade. Giovanni Bettini and Tina Severi are now buried in the Temple of Eternity at the top of the garden, inside the building they restored.
1962 Manuel Mujica Láinez publishes Bomarzo, a novel on Orsini's life, and writes the libretto Alberto Ginastera sets as an opera in 1967. It premieres in Washington, the Argentine government having condemned it.

Verified against Wikipedia, October 2026.

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Checked against Wikipedia — The garden was commissioned by Pier Francesco Orsini, called Vicino, a 16th-century condottiero and patron of the arts devoted to his wife Giulia Farnese -- not her maternal great-aunt of the same name, the mistress of Pope Alexander VI -- and he had the gardens constructed to cope with his grief when she died, The design is attributed to Pirro Ligorio and the sculptures to Simone Moschino; the complex sits in a wooded valley bottom beneath the castle of Orsini and is populated by grotesque sculptures and small buildings among the natural vegetation, Allusive verses in Italian by Annibal Caro, the first of them in 1564, and by Bitussi and Cristoforo Madruzzo, some now eroded, were inscribed beside the sculptures, During the 19th century and deep into the 20th the garden became overgrown and neglected, but after Salvador Dalí made a short movie about the park and completed a painting based on it in the 1950s, the Bettini family implemented a restoration programme which lasted throughout the 1970s; the garden remains private property, The life of Pier Francesco Orsini is the subject of Manuel Mujica Láinez's 1962 novel Bomarzo, whose libretto, also by Mujica Láinez, Alberto Ginastera set to music in 1967; the opera premiered in Washington because the Argentine government had condemned it (October 2026).