The Tarot Garden

"Two and a half hours’ drive south of Florence, we finally saw the tips of the sculptures on a hilltop outside Garavicchio, a medieval village in southern Tuscany. Flashes of blue and green and white and red caught my eye, the sun glinting off mirrored tiles. I held my breath as we made our way up the drive. I had read so much about Niki de Saint Phalle’s tarot garden that to actually see it in real life seemed as fantastical as the fact that it existed at all. [...] Inside The Emperor, which is lined in mirrored tiles. [...] Beginning in 1978, Saint Phalle and a team of artists, electricians, and enthusiastic locals (including a postman) constructed pieces inspired by the 22 major arcana on 14 acres belonging to the aristocratic Caracciolo family. [...] The garden had been, she wrote, “my husband, my love, my everything.”" - Lauren Elkin

"Moving through to Tuscany, the entire trip was planned because I wanted to visit the Niki de Saint Phalle Tarot Garden in Grosseto. The place is amazing and bizarre and lived up to my wildest exceptions. I bought three ceramic paper weights to keep on my desk to remind me of the trip." - Kate Young