The sundial in the amazing Parco Giardino
Sigurtà in Valeggio sul Mincio VR, Italy
The Sigurtà Garden Park dates back to 14th May 1407 when it was
a farm or rather a "brolo encircled by walls". A brolo was an enclosed wooded
knoll with walls encircling arable land providing a place for forage production
for the livestock.
In 1626 the whole of the property in Valeggio sul Mincio passed to the heirs of
the Maffei family that lived there for 210 years (from 1626 to 1836). Marquis
Antonio Maffei (1759-1836) set about transforming 22 hectares of the property
into a romantic English garden: that is to say a garden that brought together
natural and artificial features, where nature was never left to take over even
if might give the appearance of a landscape left to its own devices.
The spring of 1941 marked the beginning of the ownership by the Sigurtà family:
the pharmaceutical industrialist, Dr. Giuseppe Carlo Sigurtà, bought the land
from Maria Paulon, and it was Dr. Sigurtà who began the great work of
redeveloping and restoring the gardens.
Dr. Sigurtà together with his grandson Enzo, a university professor and
psychiatrist tirelessly set about the restoration.
Today Enzo's children Magda and Joseph continue this work. In 1990 the
Horizontal Sundial was constructed. Designed (it is said) to be valid for 26,000
years. Surrounded by water yet easily visible from the land it is both vandal
proof and a work of art.
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