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Water Jokes
Once visitors are back to the Main Alley they reach the water jokes: inviting benches welcome the visitor with pert water spurts. Hidden in the fun of such games there is a very clear message: you cannot stop and rest after a long day when the goal is near: a last effort is necessary to arrive to your destination and to be awarded for the commitment shown along the way.
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Starting from Diana’s Pavillion, dedicated to the
Goddess of nature, wild animals, transformations and
miracles, visitors will start a journey that takes them
from a state of ignorance to a state of awareness.
After the fish pond called Diana’s Bath, the Rainbow
Fountain and the Winds Fish Ponds, the visitors will
reach the Pila Fountain, of hexagonal shape like the
Baptism Fonts.
Next to it, the famous Boxwood Maze, the oldest
and largest at present time, symbolizes the difficult
way of human progress, filled with choices and
sacrifices.
Thus visitors, after having walked the maze, and having
found themselves, and after passing the Pagan time
through a Baptism in the Pila Fountain, are ready to go
thorough the Main Alley.
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The Fountain of Ecstasy
After the Lonze Stairs, on which a sonnet is carved to explain the significance of the Garden, visitors reach the Villa’s Piazzale (square). Here, eight allegorical statues represent the Garden and his Lord’s prerogatives, and surround the Revelation Fountain which is the final destination of a path rich in charm, metaphors and mystery.
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On the left of the
Main Alley there is the Rabbit’s Island,
which represents the condition of human life
restricted by space and time limits.
The choice of rabbits, notoriously the most
fertile rodents, signifies that the physical
limits imposed by nature to human existence can
be crossed thanks to the birth of offspring and,
in this way, the continuation of life.
In front of the Rabbit’s Island there is the
Statue of Time, a symbol of the
transcendental condition of the human spirit
which passes the usual time and space limits
to reach perfection. Time is represented as an
old man with his wings that have just closed or
are ready to be unfolded, according to personal
interpretation.
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The labyrinth
The maze, or labyrinth, is an iconographic symbol rich in significance, which has accompanied the human beings since ancient times. Daedalus, Theseus, Ariadne and the Minotaur are the protagonists of the ancient Greek mythology, in which the maze is the planimetry of a building where it is difficult to find the entrance, the exit and consequentially, to orient yourself.
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On a symbolic level, it is a spiritual journey towards the centre, towards the world within man, attained after a series of trials. This kind of interpretation, charged with mystical-Christian
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values, survives during the Middle Ages: the maze represents the repentant’s spiritual journey towards eternal salvation.
Since the middle of the 16th century the maze has lost the spiritual significance to become a recreational cultural trend in the courts. During 17th and 18th centuries large mazes were built, and Valsanzibio is a good example of this. The maze, in that age, was a symbol of the awareness of a new and uncertain world within which man advanced in his path punctuated with choices, sacrifices and trials, to reach the understanding of himself, and his soul, with tools such as faith, intelligence and perspicacity.
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