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Carlo Lorenzini, the author of the famous children’s book The Adventures of Pinocchio, spent his childhood in Collodi, where he also got his pen name from. Around the middle of the XX century, to commemorate the famous author and his worldwide acclaimed book, this theme park was created as a true fairytale walk in the footsteps of Pinocchio and surrounded by beautifully groomed vegetation.

The park features a holm oak wood planted around a square bordered by walls decorated with mosaics with scenes depicting the main adventures of Pinocchio and designed by Venturino Venturi. At the entrance of the park, there is the statue of Pinocchio and the fairy with turquoise hair by sculptor Emilio Greco. The park has recently been enlarged with a new area called “The Land of Toys”, featuring a path with bronze sculptures representing several characters of the story (the Carabiniere police officer, the cat, the fox, and the snake). The landscape architect Pietro Porcinai designed the whole green space. He conceived thick evergreen hedges and, near the sculptures, perennial and annual plants whose flower colours are matched with each episode of the story of Pinocchio – for instance, the bed of white and blue flowers surrounds the statue of the abovementioned fairy. The thick vegetation spectacularly reveals every single step along the path, while the plants themselves were painstakingly arranged to obtain dramatic and quite evocative sights.

This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)