Bomarzo attractions

Bomarzo's attractions divide into one unforgettable garden and a quieter Etruscan landscape around it.

The Sacro Bosco is the reason almost everyone comes. Among its sculptures are one of Hannibal's war elephants mangling a Roman legionary, and a statue of Ceres lounging on the bare ground with a vase of "fruits of the earth" on her head. Next to a formal exedra stands a tilting building, the Casa Storta or Twisted House, and a small octagonal temple was added about twenty years later to honour Giulia Farnese.

Enigmatic verses in Italian by Annibale Caro, Bitussi and Cristoforo Madruzzo — some now eroded — were inscribed on stone beside the sculptures.

The Orsini castle stands at the edge of the densely built town.

And in the wider territory are the Etruscan Pyramid, the tagliate and the necropoleis, the ruins of a Roman aqueduct and the kilns of the Volumni.