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La Scarzuola, Tomaso Buzzi’s stone dream

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The first touch of magic of the Scarzuola came from San Francesco who lived here for some time in a hut, making miraculous water gush out; and that source still exists. La Scarzuola has its own geographical location: it is an Umbrian country estate, in the province of Terni, but in reality it is a non-place, in the sense that it is something metaphysical rather than physical. Or rather: the ground, the buildings and the surrounding artifacts are material, and also imposing, but the important thing is what they refer to. And what do they refer to? The owner, curator and caretaker Marco Solari is there to explain it to visitors, but do not think that he packs the answers in formulas such as Perugina kisses: Solari welcomes you with cordiality but is also somewhat reluctant, he takes your measurements, probes you to understand how far you are following him, he often interrupts the conversation with unsettling laughter, and finally opens up in proportion to what he thinks he can communicate depending on the case. We have reported in the notebook several of his phrases that refer to psychoanalysis, philosophy and esotericism but we will not do the wrong, to him and to the reader, to throw them there regardless of Scarzuola; the fact is that this estate and the buildings it houses constitute a written text to be read and interpreted on site; to do otherwise would not make sense.

Marco Solari (left) has assumed the honor and the burden of keeping the Scarzuola alive and completing it starting from the drawings of Tomaso Buzzi

Marco Solari (left) has assumed the honor and the burden of keeping the Scarzuola alive and completing it starting from the drawings of Tomaso Buzzi


In this non-place the projects of the architect Tomaso Buzzi, one of the great of the twentieth century, materialize. At Scarzuola Buzzi has created a very strange and evocative work that suggests an initiatory path. The two most powerful stone parts are an amphitheater (but Solari explains that appearances can be deceiving, the meaning is different) and a kind of galleon overloaded with symbols. Much more is scattered in the meadows and among the surrounding trees; the distribution of buildings may seem random, but it all ties together.

La Scarzuola, Tomaso Buzzi's stone dream
La Scarzuola, Tomaso Buzzi's stone dream

Buzzi, who passed away in 1981, built his work leaving it unfinished, perhaps deliberately, and he intended to let it go down the drain, make it vanish like a dream upon awakening. Marco Solari was not the closest of his blood relatives, but he is the one who after Buzzi’s death took on the task of preserving his legacy, and indeed of completing the construction, on the basis of the projects he found in bulk in a basement. Solari aims to be a scrupulous performer, in reality he plays the role, almost despite himself, of co-author of the work, because the drawings found in the trunks need to be interpreted. For more than thirty years he worked there full time, “I never went on vacation – he says -, I had to check the workers at all times”. Now the work seems finished, but it is not, “the next thing to make is a snake” says Solari showing the drawings. Perhaps this work will never end, as happens with Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.

La Scarzuola, Tomaso Buzzi's stone dream
La Scarzuola, Tomaso Buzzi's stone dream

Some scenes from a film by Jasmine Trinca will soon shoot at the Scarzuola. Many famous people have passed through here, including Mario Draghi (when he led the ECB). Solari tells a funny episode that concerns an American ambassador who arrived in Bermuda shorts among swarms of starched bodyguards in a suit and tie, and another that involves Veronica Lario: she wanted to come for a ride, but couldn’t because she wanted to land with a helicopter. too big.
We did not arrive by helicopter but with a short trip by car, based at the widespread hotel Torre del Nera in Scheggino (Perugia). Even that, in its own way, is a place over the top, a hotel without borders, distributed among the renovated buildings of a medieval village, in turn besieged by the woods of the Valnerina. San Francesco would make Torre del Nera perfect by building a hut on a lawn and then miraculously making water gush out.

La Scarzuola, Tomaso Buzzi's stone dream
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