The Garden of Barbarigo of Valsanzibio is made up of seventy statues including architecture, streams, waterfalls, fountains, ponds, waterworks, fish ponds, trees and shrubs. The Garden was commissioned at the end of the seventeenth century by the Venetian noble, Zuane Francesco Barbarigo and his son Gregorio. Gregorio became a cardinal and then a saint and was strongly inspired by mythological and Origen mythology of the park, but the reasons are still obscure. The parks is fifteen acres designed to symbolize man's journey toward perfection and salvation, using the esoteric language and knowledge of that era.

Allegories can be found everywhere. Entering the garden from the arch of Sileno, there is the Bath of Diana, the primordial goddess of Nature, and thus a journey begins that leads from a state of ignorance to one of awareness, passing the Fountain of the Iris (a fountain with a central spout that is hit by four spurts and form a rainbow and the Fish pond of the Winds. There is also the Maze of Hedges, the oldest and largest that still exists today. The maze is a symbol of the uncertain journey of every human being and the uncertainty of the second stage of life, adolescence.

At the Fountain of Pila, take the Grand Avenue that is flanked by the Island of the Rabbits, which tells how the succession of generations exceeds the limits of time. On the other side of the boulevard which is dotted with waterworks and that tells us that we shouldn't stop when our goals are almost achieved, there is a monumental statue depicting Time, that has stopped through space, and which is a symbol of transcendence. This transcendence reminds us that the human spirit can only achieve perfection by flying beyond the usual limits of space and time. Moving between Immanence and Transcendence we reach the Fountain of the Revelation, the final destination of the symbolic path.

Giardino Barbarigo
Galzignano - Padova
Tel. 049 8059224
www.valsanzibiogiardino.it

Ufficio Informazioni Turistiche Battaglia Terme: Tel. 049 9115996