Pennabilli, Tonino Guerra's Places of the Soul

Tonino Guerra, poet and screenwriter for Fellini, Antonioni and Tarkovsky, chose Pennabilli as his home in 1989 and lived here until his death in 2012. Here he invented a museum unlike any other: not a building, but a series of places scattered throughout the village and valley, small poetic inventions to discover on foot.

The most famous is the Orto dei frutti dimenticati (Orchard of Forgotten Fruits), opened in 1990 on land belonging to missionary friars: a museum of flavours with ancient fruit trees of the Apennines, apples, quinces, cornelian cherries, jujubes, sorbs and medlars. On the boundary wall is the Rifugio delle Madonne abbandonate (Refuge of Abandoned Madonnas), ceramic Madonnas from country shrines, collected here to save them.

Then there is the Strada delle Meridiane (Street of Sundials), with sundials painted on the houses, the Santuario dei pensieri (Sanctuary of Thoughts), stone sculptures in a silent garden, the Angelo coi baffi (Angel with a Moustache) and, outside the village, the Giardino pietrificato di Bascio (Petrified Garden of Bascio). Along the streets you will also find words on walls, little stories written on ceramic tiles.

Pennabilli is a village on two rocky peaks, the Roccione and the Penna, in the upper Valmarecchia. Every summer it hosts Artisti in Piazza, the street art festival, and for over fifty years an antiques fair of national standing.