The Long, Winding Road to the Labyrinth

It was a late spring afternoon, and guests had arrived – some from afar – for a celebration; the occasion was joyful, full of wonder, exclamations, and toasts. Yet, that didn’t stop a certain perplexity from lingering, the same uncertainty that had shadowed the project since its inception. What would become, say in just ten years, of that peculiar assemblage of bamboo plants and pyramid, museum, porticoes and halls… in short, of the Folly (or folie, as the eighteenth century called those extravagant constructions with which aristocrats adorned their parks and gardens), which Franco Maria Ricci had built, in his later years, in the countryside of his ancestors? Well, exactly ten years have passed, and that ensemble of vegetation and walls we all call “the Labyrinth” has welcomed a million visitors – some illustrious, such as Orhan Pamuk and Wole Soyinka, Nobel laureates in literature, or the filmmaker Peter Greenaway – and hosted major exhibitions, concerts, lectures, weddings, private and public events with a flair for the exotic and much more, but also the publishing house which produces this very magazine, as well as many beautiful illustrated books. In the meantime, Ricci has left us, but his dream, transformed into concrete reality, still lives on, continuing to fascinate even the most discerning of visitors, exactly as it has done all these ten years. In 2015, upon opening the Masone to the public, Ricci decided to write this brief text to explain what had been for him a bizarre, daring, and exhilarating project. Publishing his words today strikes us as the most fitting tribute.