Padula Park, with its tree heritage, the large 19th-century villa now a museum, and contemporary art installations, is not only a recreational space surrounded by nature but a source of cultural enrichment for citizens and tourists.
The complex originated in 1879 at the behest of entrepreneur Bernardo Fabbricotti (1834-1916), an exponent of a family that was the protagonist of an astounding social rise: from quarrymen to major marble industrialists with extremely broad commercial horizons. For more than a century, until the 1930s, the Fabbricotti name dominated the marble economy, ending up representing in the collective memory the symbol of a long historical and social phase.
Already the progenitor Domenico Andrea (1788-1877) lived in a manor house located in the “Predio della Padula,” an area on the edge of the city with land planted with olive trees and a lower vegetable area that bordered the marshy land (hence the toponym “Padula”) around the Ninfale canal. The original dwelling was enlarged and modernized between 1834 and 1838, while colonial houses and agricultural outbuildings were built in the lower part of the estate.
Bernardo, who had long headed the London branch of the family firm, inherited the property upon his father’s death, and commissioned architect Vincenzo Micheli (1833-1905) to build a new villa with an English-style park.The new Renaissance-inspired building presents an imposing and severe architecture, with the use of local marble limited to the balcony of the facade and the access staircase. The location dominates the park, whose extent by then had reached nine hectares, and the city below, affirming the social position, and internationally-minded good taste, of its owner. Bernardo had Micheli erect two other villas, one in Livorno, the other in Montughi, near Florence, where Queen Victoria also resided (in 1894), but the Fabbricotti fortunes did not survive the shock of the great crisis of 1929, which, combined with the effects of the regime’s monetary policies, led to the economic collapse of the dynasty.
Stripped of its furnishings, the villa was then alienated, maintaining its agricultural functions.After World War II, the structure remained abandoned and prey to vandalism for a long time. Restoration began in the park, which has hosted an open-air cinema, concerts and music festivals since the 1980s.
A first art installation, on the occasion of the 10th Carrara Sculpture Biennial (2000), then paved the way for the larger interventions put in place for the 2002 biennial, with the placement of seven site-specific works all still preserved in the park.
Finally, 2018 saw the completion of the restoration of the villa, which houses the Carrara and Michelangelo Museum (CARMI) and temporary exhibitions.
Entrance to the park can be from the upper access on Via di Sorgnano, near the main building, or from the lower access on Via di Gragnana, which is through the whimsical gatehouse (1890), built in the form of a small castle by Leandro Caselli (1854-1906).
Preceded by the adaptation of a Dantean rhyme (“lascia dir le genti // torre che non crolla // all’impeto dei venti”), the so-called “Torretta” leads across a high bridge to the villa’s agricultural appurtenances, which now house the sculpture workshops of the Academy of Fine Arts of Carrara. The ascent proceeds with wide bends, among olive groves and centuries-old trees, passing on the left the building known as villino Vittoria, where a toy library is housed. Ashort distance away, nestled among olive trees , is Anne and Patrick Poirer’s White Room of Silence (2000), a small cubic building made of marble blocks, designed as a place of meditation and isolation within the park .
Next comes Crescita, by Dani Karavan (1930-2021); first among the works created for the 2002 biennial, curated by Giuliano Gori, the environmental sculpture consists of a large marble block with a violent fracture in which an olive tree has been planted, in a whole charged with symbolic meanings summarized by the biblical phrase engraved in the marble: “Man is a tree of the field.”
Reachingthe villa and passing the visitors’ center (on the left), one reaches the upper entrance to the park, near which one encounters Curved Wall (2002) by Sol Lewitt (1928-2007), a curvilinear wall made of small marble cubes, intended to combine the seriality of minimalist culture with the craftsmanship of Carrara workshops .
Just beyond, in the lawn above the villa, Homage to Jean-Jaques Rousseau ( 2002) by Ian Hamilton (1925-2006), with the outline of a large chalice drawn from the cutout of two huge marble slabs planted in the ground. The inscription (“Jean Jaques Rousseau / It was he who made the idea of nature the ethical, political and critical inspiration of an entire generation”), quotes historian Alfred Cobban in an effort to emphasize the centrality of nature in human life.
Passing the pond, one ascends to the most striking part of the park, where the rocks have been arranged to form an artificial gorge, with walkways leading into the woods: here is Claudio Parmiggiani’s Uovo in Marble (2002), set among the rocks in the intention of communicating a sense of suspension and imminence in the human-nature relationship .
Goingback down, one must reach a small and anonymous masonry shed to discover Hegel‘s Owl (2002) by Robert Morris (1931-2018): looking out of the porthole located on the small wooden door, and pressing the button on the side of it, a marble owl will emerge from the darkness and seem to want to attack the viewer, a reference to Minerva’s nightshade mentioned by Hegel and an invitation to peer into the darkness of one’s inner self to the exclusion of the physical world .
Instead, Luigi Mainolfi’s Ballerine (2002), six marble spheroids fitted with tentacled legs with an eerie presence , arehoused in the Fabbricotti’s old aviary . The tour concludes with Aspettiamo Visite (2002) by Mario Merz (1925-2003), a bust and a few marble fragments placed on the windowsills of the villa, almost ghosts of former tenants and visitors, in a context to which the state of abandonment in which the building was in at the time this environmental sculpture was conceived added fascination.
The tour can end with a visit to the CARMI museum, which has a permanent collection intended to illustrate Michelangelo’s relationship with Carrara, and regularly hosts temporary exhibitions.