The labyrinth of Franco Maria Ricci (photo: Carlo Vannini)
Bambù the terrier makes an excellent guide. He races around on all fours through the labyrinth, and comes back only when his master Franco Maria Ricci whistles for him. Dressed in a beige trench coat and facing an entrance flanked by enormous hedges created from 25 different kinds of “reeds,” Franco Maria Ricci is the owner of this verdant extravaganza. He is 77, but talks and dreams the way a child might, and only turns cynical once: “Do you know why I chose bamboo? Because if I’d built it with boxwood I would have had to wait twenty years to see it finished, and I don’t have that kind of time left.”
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