Labirinto della Masone

At Fontanellato, publisher Franco Maria Ricci created a bamboo labyrinth around an art collection, a library devoted to typography and graphic design, and a chapel. The project fulfilled a promise he made to writer Jorge Luis Borges.

Why it matters

The Labirinto della Masone combines a bamboo garden with the Franco Maria Ricci collection, a library devoted to typography and graphic design, and the pyramidal chapel known as the Piramide. Ricci conceived the project after promising Borges in 1977 that he would build a labyrinth. The complex opened in 2015. The collection includes about five hundred works from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, while the central piazza and brick buildings extend the design into the surrounding garden.

What to notice

Ricci planted different bamboo species, whose green, yellow, spotted and striped stems create varied textures and colours. The star-shaped plan recalls Renaissance urban design. Architect Pier Carlo Bontempi designed the brick buildings, while Davide Dutto helped develop the labyrinth concept from the 1990s. The design draws on neoclassical draftsmen including Boullée, Lequeu, Ledoux and Antolini, and on the 1499 illustrated novel Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. The galleries include Adolfo Wildt's 1911 marble Vir Temporis Acti. The library honours Giambattista Bodoni and holds the complete output of the Tallone press.

Context and history

Ricci said he had dreamed of building a labyrinth about thirty years before it opened. The concept matured from the 1990s with Davide Dutto, and the star plan was planted on the Masone estate outside Fontanellato. The complex was inaugurated in May 2015. The Fondazione Franco Maria Ricci brings the collection, library and garden together under one cultural project; an international labyrinth summit was held there in 2018 under the high patronage of the President of the Republic.