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Gianni Rodari Park is on Corso Moncalieri, in Turin, built on a gentle slope towards the Po River – it offers a truly enchanting view of the Savoy villas and the surrounding environment.
Opened in 2010 and dedicated to Gianni Rodari, a famous journalist, writer and poet for children, it was developed in collaboration with Parato Elementary School: young students were, in fact, actively involved in this project, in order to jazz it up with their own creativity and actual needs. Turin won the “The city for the green” award for the second consecutive year, thanks to this original and highly successful facility.

The park currently houses “Casa di Oz” (“The house of Oz”), a non-profit association that offers support and aid to families with sick children from outside the city, currently hospitalized in Turin hospitals.

The park offers countless places full of poetry, such as the pergola covered with mixed-colour wisteria, which protects the garden from the traffic noise; then, there’s the small temple with wooden slats and comfortable armchairs surrounded by ornamental grasses (Calamagrostis and Pennisetum spp.), a Zen garden, some flower meadows, and even a terraced orchard where people can pick their own cherries, hazelnuts, apples, pears and quinces. Not to mention a pergola of star jasmine (Trachelosmperum jasminoides) winding like a river among the rose gardens.
A cycle path and a pedestrian path connect the protected children’s playground to the municipal swimming pool.

Gianni Rodari (1920-1980), journalist, writer and poet, wrote many short stories and nursery rhymes; he has contributed to profoundly renewing children’s literature. In 1973, his pedagogical masterpiece, “The grammar of fantasy”, was released receiving terrific accolades. Gianni Rodari used to say that: ”Fantasy is as much a part of us as reason: looking inside it is a way like no others to look inside ourselves”.

This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)