If you like art as much as the wilderness of Maremma, this truly original art park in Capalbio , more precisely in Gravicchio, is ideal for you! The Tarot Garden merges with harmony the charm of nature and the beauty of human art.

Inspired by no less than the Gaudí Park in Barcelona, this colourful and impressive open-air artistic gallery arises from the creative inspiration of Niki de Saint Phalle, an artist of French origin, but of world renown. It gathers 22 artworks depicting the Tarot cards used by fortune-tellers to predict the future.

On the green slope of the hill, spring up huge installations made of iron and concrete representing the Temperance, the Death, the Lovers, the Hanged Man, and so on. The house-statues, some provided with semi-mobile mechanical parts, are coated with different materials - steel, glass, mirrors, ceramics - according to the author`s artistic inspiration. Niki de Saint Phalle has devoted almost 20 years of job to her "esoteric garden", flanked by her husband, Jean Tinguely, who died in 1991, and by several local artists and craftsmen: a “mammoth task”, which cost the author more than 5 million Euro, completely self-financed with her own work!

The entrance, designed by Mario Botta, made of a double wall of tuff with a single central opening, wants to be, as requested by the author, a threshold to clearly separate the every-day reality from the "magic pause" that this park represents as a place suspended in the middle of Maremma, with neither space nor time.

In 1997, the "Tarot Garden Foundation" was established in order to preserve and maintain the artistic park, and the first visitor got inside in May of the following year. If you`re intrigued and you want to visit the garden, you can find opening hours and other info on the site: https://www.nikidesaintphalle.com/ItalianFrameset.html