Scarzuola

The location of the photo shoot featured in this issue of The Italian Touch is one of the most surreal and esoteric places ever designed in Italy: Scarzuola.
This unfinished work was designed by the architect Tommaso Buzzi, one of the 20th century’s most important men of art and culture, who purchased a convent in 1956 to create an ideal city, tracing a symbolic and neo-illuminist path alluding to his esoteric knowledge and intuitions. The structure is located in Montegiove, in the municipality of Montegabbione (Terni province), and was built adjacent to the aforementioned convent dating back to the 1200’s founded by St. Francis. Scarzuola is configured like a spontaneously generated assembly of forms and architectures, like a great global work that is always open and never finished, in which the elements of the past are layered over those from the present and the possible future. The dominant style is Neo-Mannerism, as evidenced by the use-abuse of stairways, deliberate asymmetries, and monsters and in the suggestions of labyrinthic, geometric and even astronomic paths. 
After the death of Tommaso Buzzi, the property was inherited by the architect’s nephew Marco Solari, who continued its construction, faithfully following the designs left behind by his uncle, continuing the construction of the temple that, as destiny would have it, would never be completed.
However, the only way to get a true taste of the enchanting atmosphere is to visit the place, perhaps accompanied by the owner Marco, who is certain to convey, like no one else, the sensations and emotions of so many years of insight and dedication.