Bomarzo is a small town, located near Viterbo on the road to Orta.
It is the Orsini family's hereditary fief. The Castle rises at the edge of this small town. The so called Park of the Monsters just outside the city of Bomarzo is a Late Renaissance manieristic garden gallery of sculptures and architecture commissioned in the 16th century by Vicino Orsini. It includes also a palace, designed by Baldassarre Peruzzi, and a garden with grotesque stone sculptures of monstrous porportions, depiciting mythological personalities and creatures taken from classical fables: Pergasus, Hercules, Neptune, Cera.
Prince Pier Francesco Orsini built the villa in 1552. Mourning the death of his wife, Giulia Farnese, he erected a temple and statuary in her honor on the grounds. [1] The villa was designed by Architect Pirro Ligorio. Giovanni Bettini purchased the property in 1954, eventually opening it to the public.

The residence's gardens were created by Vicino Orsini, the Duke of Bomarzo. He was born in 1528 and died in 1588. An educated humanist, he was interested in the Arts and was their patron. He devoted his life to the happiness of his house and his wife, Julia Farnese. After Julia Farnese's death, he created the plan for a garden, Bomarzo Park.
He didn't call this garden a giardino, but Bosco Sacro, a Sacred Grove or Bosco dei Monstri, the Monsters' grove. Monster must be understood in the Latin meaning of monstrare, which means to show and demonstrate. This then means that from stop to stop, from stage to stage, each element is a component of an immense, very neoplatonic poem to his lost love. To create this garden, he called on one of the greatest landscapers and architects of his time, Pirro Ligorio.

After the death of Pope Paul III Vicino Orsini fought at the side of the Farnese Dukes of Castro who supported France against Spain. He was taken prisoner for two years (1553-55). He was then involved by Pope Paul IV in a war against Spain which ended in total disaster. After this event he decided to retire to Bomarzo and to dedicate himself to the construction of a Sacred Wood which would represent his view of life.
At the time Vicino Orsini decided to build his Sacred Wood other gardens were in the process of being designed or completed at Caprarola, Bagnaia and Tivoli. They were all designed along the slope of a hill and had a very symmetrical structure. Vicino Orsini chose instead a hidden valley, rather far from his palace, probably because big boulders of peperino, a volcanic rock easy to cut, were available there. [2]

Unfortunately, as with most of the Renaissance gardens, the work was neglected.
When it was revisited in the beginning of this century, it was overgrown with trees, everything was half collapsed, all of which merely gave the garden an even more fantastic aspect. It was at this time that André Pieyre de Mandiargue visited and wrote a sublime treatise on the sleeping garden of Bomarzo.