If you are in Umbria and have decided to treat yourself to a weekend away from the chaos, there is a place capable of surprising even the most experienced travellers: La Scarzuola.
Hidden among the woods of the hamlet of Montegiove, in the municipality of Montegabbione, this little-known rural location preserves a unique artistic and symbolic heritage.
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Between Franciscan legend and noble history
The name “Scarzuola” derives from scarza, a marsh plant. According to tradition, Saint Francis of Assisi built a hut here in 1218 with this very plant. Legend also tells of a rose and a laurel planted by the saint, next to which a spring believed to be miraculous flowed.
To commemorate the episode, the Counts of Marsciano had a church and a convent built, then entrusted to the Friars Minor. The complex remained active until the end of the eighteenth century, when it passed to the marquises Misciatelli of Orvieto.
The arrival of Tomaso Buzzi and the birth of the ideal city
The turning point came in the twentieth century, when the Marquis Paolo Misciatelli introduced the Milanese architect Tomaso Buzzi to the property. Buzzi is fascinated by it and turns La Scarzuola into the project of his life.
Starting from 1958, a truly ideal city took shape around the Franciscan convent. It is a complex and visionary theatrical scenography that reflects his personal universe.
Buzzi describes this space as his own world, made of art, culture, elegance, pleasures and contradictions, but also of silence, study and contemplation.
A symbolic architecture between sacred and profane
The Buzzian city was born as an alternative and deliberately dissonant image. It presents itself as a profane space crossed by a secular mysticism, where opposite dimensions coexist. Here social and hermitic life, contemplation and worldliness, imagination and geometric rigor come together.
The project draws inspiration from Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and finds expression in the neo-mannerist style. Buzzi uses scales that multiply in every direction, introduces deliberate disproportions and inserts monstrous figures. The whole takes on a labyrinthine, evocative and almost surreal character, with references to geometry, astronomy and symbolism.
Theatres, monuments and symbolic routes
The city is configured as a true “anthology of stone”. It includes seven theaters and as many symbolic monuments. Among the most significant elements, the Acropolis Theater stands out, which dominates the entire complex, together with the Theater on the Water and the Tower Theater. Added to these are spaces such as the round Patio and the infinite Patio.
The route also features reinterpretations of great architectural models such as the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Parthenon, the Pyramid and the Arc de Triomphe. The stairways have a central role and take on a precise symbolic value, as in the case of the musical scale of seven octaves and Job’s scale.
The visitor passes through a landscape dotted with temples, water basins and bas-reliefs of fantastic creatures, in a continuous dialogue between imagination and architectural construction.
An unfinished and then completed work
When Buzzi died in 1981, the city was only partially built. However, his sketches allowed his nephew Marco Solari to complete the project. Solari also intervened on the church, which remained separate from the Buzzi work and maintained the function of a private oratory.
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How to visit La Scarzuola
The visit to La Scarzuola is only possible by reservation and requires a guided tour. You can book by email at info@lascarzuola.com or by telephone at 0763 837463.
The visits often take place with the presence of Marco Solari himself, who contributes to making the experience more direct and aware.
Why go there today
La Scarzuola is not a simple tourist destination, but a complex and layered experience. The place connects architecture, symbolism and landscape in a unique way.
Whoever arrives here does not just find a site to visit, but a space to interpret, capable of conveying different suggestions depending on the gaze of those who pass through it.
A magical place that hosts important events and demonstrations every year and welcomes many visitors intrigued by this evocative city which contains within itself all the scenic beauties of our Peninsula.
