Tarot Garden

The gravel crunches under your shoes. Then the light changes. Ahead, between the umbrella pines and the cork oaks of the Tuscan Maremma, something flashes. It is a giant face covered in mirrors, throwing small pieces of sun back at the sky. The air smells of dry grass and warm resin. Somewhere a cicada starts up. You have just stepped into the Tarot Garden, and nothing here is the size or colour you expect.

This garden is the life's great work of Niki de Saint Phalle, a French-American artist who became known in the 1960s. Her early fame came from her 'shooting paintings', where she fired a rifle at bags of paint hidden under plaster. Later she made the Nanas. These are huge, joyful, brightly painted female figures. Here, on a hillside near Capalbio, she brought both sides together, the wildness and the joy, in a scale that few artists ever try.

The idea began in Barcelona. As a young woman, Niki visited Park Güell, the hilltop park of the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí. There she saw benches and walls covered in broken tiles, a mosaic technique called trencadís. She later said the visit changed her life. She decided that one day she too would build a garden where people could walk inside the art. It took her more than twenty years to begin.

The land itself was a gift. It came from friends, members of the Caracciolo family, who owned property in this corner of southern Tuscany. Work started in the late 1970s. The garden opened to the public in 1998, after nearly two decades of building. So what you see is not the product of one burst of inspiration. It is the result of many seasons of hard, slow, physical labour on this hillside.

The theme comes from the tarot. The tarot is a deck of cards, used for games in Italy for centuries and later for fortune-telling. Its most famous cards are the twenty-two Major Arcana, picture cards such as the Magician, the Moon, Death and the World. Niki gave each of these cards a body. Some are towers, some are animals, some are houses. Walk the paths and you are walking, card by card, through a full tarot reading.

Here is the first surprise. The artist did not only build the Empress — she lived inside her. The Empress is a vast seated figure shaped like a sphinx, a creature with a woman's head and a lion's body. For several years, Niki made her home and studio within it. One breast held a bedroom, the other a kitchen. Look closely at the interior and you will see walls and ceilings covered in small mirror pieces, like the inside of a jewel box.

She did not work alone. Her husband, the Swiss artist Jean Tinguely, built many of the steel frames that hold these shapes up. Tinguely was known for wild moving machines made from scrap metal, and some of his kinetic pieces appear here among her sculptures. Teams of local workers joined them too. Over the years, people from the surrounding villages learned to weld, to pour concrete and to cut ceramic. The garden became a kind of village workshop.

The method is simple to describe and hard to do. First came a skeleton of welded steel. Then a layer of concrete was sprayed over the frame. Finally, by hand, the surface was covered with ceramic tiles, coloured glass and mirror. Many tiles were shaped and glazed especially for each figure. That is why the curves fit so closely. Run your eyes along a single line of colour and follow how it bends with the body beneath.

Now the second surprise. This bright and playful place carries real pain inside it. Niki spent years working with polyester resin and other materials in her earlier career, and she later suffered serious lung problems. Several cards here touch hard subjects — the Tower, Death, the Devil. She did not hide darkness. She covered it in colour. Many visitors leave thinking only of the joy, and they miss the courage underneath it.

Take a moment with the architecture at the entrance. The wall you passed through was designed by the Swiss architect Mario Botta. It is plain, solid and heavy, with a round opening cut through it. That restraint is deliberate. The wall closes off the ordinary world. When you step through the opening, the contrast makes the colours on the other side feel even louder. It works like a curtain before a play.

As you move through the garden, notice how the ground itself changes. Some paths are smooth. Others carry words, drawings and small symbols pressed into the concrete. Watch your feet as much as the sculptures. The trees matter too. The artist left the Mediterranean woodland around her figures, so a mosaic giant can stand half in shadow under an oak. The planting softens the edges and makes each figure feel discovered rather than displayed.

After Tinguely died in 1991, Niki kept working. She finished the main body of the garden through the 1990s and saw it open to visitors. She died in 2002. A foundation now cares for the site. Salt air, sun and winter rain all wear on tile and mirror, so repair is constant. If you notice a slightly brighter patch of colour on a figure, you may be looking at careful restoration work.

Before you leave, stand still for a moment. Listen to the wind in the pines, and to other visitors laughing as they find their own reflections in the mirrored skin of a sculpture. Look back at the shining figures on the slope. Then look out past them, to the ordinary hills of the Maremma, the olive trees and the soft Tuscan light. Somewhere out there, one woman once saw a park in Barcelona and decided to build this. Carry that thought with you down the path.