The Pearls of the Euganean Hills: an afternoon in the Valsanzibio garden

Valsanzibio, Galzignano Terme (Padua), 15 May 2022

Some places look beautiful by accident. The Monumental Garden of Valsanzibio is not one of them. Every avenue, every fountain, every hedge was placed there to make you feel something, in a precise order. Today we would call it experience design. Here they did it in the seventeenth century.

That's why, for our latest Gossip Wine experience, The Pearls of the Euganean Hills, we chose this garden: an afternoon spent walking through a story, and then tasting it in the glass.

A garden born from a vow

The garden of Villa Barbarigo began as a votive offering. Giovanni Francesco Barbarigo commissioned it in thanks after his family survived the plague of 1630–1631; his sons Antonio and Gregorio completed it in 1669. The design is attributed to Luigi Bernini, papal architect and younger brother of Gian Lorenzo (Finestre sull'Arte).

The route is not just a stroll. It starts at the Pavilion of Diana, crosses the water and wind of the fountains, enters the maze and ends at the Fountain of Ecstasy: a symbolic journey from error to revelation. The boxwood maze, about one and a half kilometres long, is considered the oldest hedge maze in existence, and its seven dead ends are read as the seven deadly sins.

The gossip, for anyone who designs experiences, is this: three hundred and fifty years ago someone had already understood that a place is remembered for the journey it takes you on, not for the individual things it contains.

The afternoon

The experience was designed for a small group of twenty, in four movements.

• 3:00 pm — Arrival. A welcome at the garden entrance.
• 3:15 pm — The walk. A guided visit to the Barbarigo – Pizzoni Ardemani garden with Daniela Casa, a licensed tour guide, who told the history and symbols of the route.
• 4:00 pm — The territory in the glass. The story of the Euganean Hills and a guided tasting of four local wines, with Luciana Dias.
• 5:30 pm — Farewell. Closing reflections, together.

The price was €30 per person, including the guided visit to the garden and the tasting.

In the glass

Four wines to tell the story of the Euganean Hills, two of them Fior d'Arancio: Moscato Giallo, the area's signature grape, read by two different wineries.

• Frigus Zero, La Mincana — traditional-method Brut
• Fior d'Arancio Colli Euganei DOCG 2019, Maeli — 100% Moscato Giallo
• Fior d'Arancio Colli Euganei DOCG, Quota 101
• Serro, Colli Euganei Rosso DOC 2018, Il Mottolo

Why it worked

The most important choice wasn't the wine, or the garden. It was the order.

First you walk and listen: the garden trains your eye, slows your pace, plants a question in your mind. Then you sit down and taste. The wine arrives when guests already have the landscape in their eyes, and it stops being a product to judge: it becomes the end of a story.

Two different voices, one for the place and one for the wine, held the afternoon together without talking over each other. The small group made it easy to ask questions. And the garden, itself a journey from beginning to end, gave the experience its structure without needing to invent another one.

Worth remembering

• A place is remembered for the journey it takes you on.
• Landscape first, then the glass: wine makes more sense at the end of a story.
• Two complementary voices are worth more than a monologue.
• Great historic gardens are lessons in experience design, and worth reading as such.

The Pearls of the Euganean Hills was a Gossip Wine experience held on 15 May 2022, created with Daniela Casa. To plan your own trip to the area, read our guide to the Euganean Hills. Upcoming editions are announced on the site: join the waiting list if you'd like to be there.