Visiting the Tarot Garden by Niki de Saint Phalle is an experience you should have at least once in your life, and one you’ll hardly forget. I had wanted to go for a long time, but I really didn’t expect what I found.
The Tarot Garden was, for me, a journey into the eclectic mind and the life of an artist I knew very little about and who fascinated me so much that she pushed me to dig deeper.
This garden, though in a completely different style, reminded me a great deal of the Park of the Monsters in Bomarzo: as there, no real explanation of the works is given. Niki de Saint Phalle chose to leave no captions and to hand us visitors the task of finding our own, personal interpretation.
For her, art must leave the viewer free to read into the works whatever comes closest to their own point of view and background. That’s why, in the Tarot park, you’ll find only cryptic and sometimes misleading phrases.
If you’d like to discover my experience and my personal interpretation of the works in the Tarot Garden, below you’ll find everything, including the practical information to reach this mystical place.
Let’s go!
What are tarots?
Before I tell you what to see in the Tarot Garden, a short note on tarot cards. If you already know this particular deck, you can skip this and go straight to the sculptures.
Tarot cards are a deck whose origin is still debated. What we know for sure is that they were already used in northern Italy from the 15th century. The cards are divided into minor and major arcana. The minor ones are the Italian cards still used today in games we all know, like scopa, rubamazzo or briscola. The major arcana, which we no longer use for playing, took on a different value over time, losing their role as playing cards to become instruments for “predicting the future”.
The major arcana are 21, plus the Fool. Each tradition has depicted them differently, with varied attributes, but keep in mind that in every depiction each small object or decoration has a precise meaning.
It’s no coincidence that Niki de Saint Phalle chose these esoteric figures and linked them to other “initiatory” concepts. Everyone can see what they wish: I saw a bit of a metaphor for life and an invitation to introspection. Visiting the Tarot Garden means undertaking an initiatory journey, more or less consciously.
Niki de Saint Phalle’s inspiration
The Franco-American artist was openly inspired by both the Park of the Monsters in Bomarzo and Villa d’Este in Tivoli. But one of her constants was the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí: in the Tarot Garden the echo of Barcelona’s Park Güell is unmistakable (if you haven’t been yet, I highly recommend it).
How did she manage to build this park?
The Tarot Garden was entirely funded by the artist, who worked on it from 1979 until it opened to the public in 1998 (Niki then died in 2002). If you go, you’ll notice that some works are unfinished: an explicit choice by the artist, who also left precise instructions about opening times and the conservation of her creations.
It was a very long labour, carried on with her husband Jean Tinguely, to whom the many self-moving mechanical structures are due, and with a few other artist and architect friends (among them Nico Weber, Sepp Imhof, Paul Wiedmer, Dok van Winsen, Pierre Marie and Isabelle Le Jeune, Alan Davie and Marina Karella), plus numerous workers.
Now let me tell you my interpretation of the various sculptures.
The Wheel of Fortune
When you arrive at the Tarot park it isn’t obvious that the big fountain at the entrance is a card too: it’s the Wheel of Fortune, number 10.
In tarot reading this card can stand for change, cyclicity, the passing of time. Fortune comes and goes: it’s up to us to seize it.
The big wheels, like gears, are turned by the water. I saw in them the representation of chance, of events: something that flows and can’t be stopped, and that sets all the other gears of existence turning. The four hearts on the larger wheel looked to me like a four-leaf clover, a symbol of good luck. Placed below the Magician and the High Priestess, this fountain takes on an even richer meaning.
What do you think?
The Magician
The first sculpture you meet when you go to visit the Tarot Garden is, almost inevitably, the Magician. Also called the Bagatto or the Alchemist, it’s the first card of the major arcana.
It’s easy to spot because it overlaps the High Priestess and is depicted as a face, a kind of mask with a raised hand, entirely covered in mirrors.
What does it symbolise?
In the tradition of the cards, the Magician stands for the union of the divine with the earthly, but also for creativity. The alchemist is the one who transforms the elements, who holds a knowledge and puts it at the service of others. Isn’t that exactly what artists do, and Niki de Saint Phalle in particular, giving us this garden?
The High Priestess
This enormous sculpture immediately recalls the Ogre of the Park of the Monsters in Bomarzo.
The High Priestess, card number 2, is represented in the Tarot Garden with her mouth wide open, from which the water that feeds the fountain flows, and her hair in disarray. Inside the mouth hides the true priestess.
What lies within?
In a starry grotto, where the water creates beautiful reflections of light, stands a cloaked figure that seems almost alive. She is the true High Priestess of the Tarot Garden, the keeper of unconscious knowledge and of secrets that cannot be revealed. The arcanum stands for duality, for something secret, and is always drawn as a seated priestess.
Water is often linked to the moon and, therefore, to woman. It reminded me a little of Caravaggio’s Medusa or the Medusa in the Capitoline Museums.
What interpretation would you give the High Priestess?
The Empress
The sculpture of the Empress of the Tarot Garden is truly colossal.
Card number 3 of the major arcana is an actual dwelling: it was here that Niki de Saint Phalle lived while building the garden, with her husband and the friends who came to visit.
The figure, covered in brightly coloured ceramics, is easily linked to the Nanas, the voluptuous female figures the artist depicted in so many installations. Ample and enormous, I don’t think it’s by chance that she was chosen as a home: the Empress stands for motherhood, fertility and femininity, the one who gives life and within whom things take shape, the creative force.
What I liked most is that the house is made entirely of mirrors: I fell in love at first sight.
Strength
This installation in the Tarot Garden is by far my favourite.
It’s a giant dragon of green mirrors, with fiery red wings, baring its teeth at a woman dressed in white. The woman seems to hold the dragon on a leash, even though the leash can’t be seen.
Strength is card number 11. Usually the young woman in white is shown with a horizontal 8, symbol of infinity, in the act of opening a lion’s mouth. Niki de Saint Phalle’s interpretation immediately made me think of a reworking of Paolo Uccello’s Saint George and the Dragon: here a young lady holds an enormous dragon on a leash and seems to want to stop the knight who is piercing it.
True strength is taming the most fearsome beast of all: ourselves. It’s being master of one’s own instincts, destiny and impulses. The white of the dress stands for the purity of soul and intent needed to learn to be truly strong.
Being so fascinated by this work means, perhaps, that I still have a lot of work to do on myself before I can hold my inner dragon on a leash.
We’ll see!
The Sun
On the other side of the square there’s a huge door with a depiction of the Sun. Card number 19, the Sun is a symbol of victory, of success, of beneficial and vital light. To visit the Tarot Garden you’ll necessarily have to pass beneath it.
Niki de Saint Phalle wrote that she depicted a bird because birds are the creatures that come closest to the sun. I, on the other hand, immediately saw a phoenix, the legendary bird reborn from its own ashes. After all, what better than the sun to symbolise “resurrection” meant as rebirth, physical, emotional or spiritual?
The Pope
In tarot the Pope stands for spiritual knowledge.
Here the artist portrayed him as a saint, a hermit, an enlightened man. On the base of the structure on which he kneels there’s a face with the third eye open, symbol of spiritual enlightenment. Traditionally the Pope is shown teaching two monks, thus taking on the meaning of master or guide: here the one learning from him is a brightly coloured female figure who lifts her gaze towards the triple cross.
Being card number 5 also gives him the quintessence, the fifth element: the spiritual part, hard to explain.
The Hanged Man
The Hanged Man is inside the Tarot Garden, in a kind of niche of mirrors: coloured outlines, an evanescent body, suspended by one heel. The twelfth card is nothing but a young man hanging upside down, who nonetheless seems calm and serene.
This card is associated with balance and the “alternative” point of view, the one someone who looks at the world upside down can have. Sometimes he’s called the Hanged Man though he isn’t really hanged: he’s the nonconformist, the one who lives heedless of others’ judgment and still finds his own balance. It’s one of the most enigmatic figures in the Tarot Garden.
The Hermit
Niki de Saint Phalle imagined the Hermit as an almost transparent statue.
This man in search of his own spirituality and of the secrets of life is depicted with a staff much like a caduceus. It’s card number 9 and stands for wisdom and inner search. The artist said she imagined the Oracle as the female version of this card (which doesn’t exist in traditional tarot): you’ll find the Oracle sculpture further on, up the hill.
Justice
I really loved the interpretation of card number 8, Justice.
The artist imagined it as a huge woman dressed in black and white (good and evil), holding a scale made of her own breasts. In her colossal skirt there’s a niche, closed by a gate, in which the gears of a mechanism designed by her husband Jean Tinguely move: a machine that grinds and makes a horrible noise, among animal skulls and gears that look rusted.
The first thing that came to mind is that justice always contains within itself a share of injustice too: it’s never all black or white, but made of many shades. Andrea, my partner, saw it instead as the complex, rusty machinery through which we reach justice: the years of trial, the accusations and counter-accusations. What’s certain is that this isn’t only about justice in general, but above all about being just and able to judge ourselves, every day.
The Star
Conceived as a fountain, this statue is unfinished and offers an interesting chance to understand the process of creating the sculptures inside the Tarot Garden: the edges of the basin lack the coloured majolica.
The card shows a naked young woman pouring water from two jugs, one feeding the rivers of the earth and the other a pool of water. The Star is the seventeenth card and, visiting the garden, you’ll notice it’s one of the few that smiles. Symbolically it’s tied to the flow of life, of nature and of time.
The Lovers
Card number 6 is the Lovers, whom the artist depicted as Adam and Eve. It’s the card of choice, a conscious choice: a young couple faces a decision, right or wrong?
Personally I think the choice to give up pleasures, comforts and even eternal life for the sake of KNOWING is not wrong at all. It’s the hardest road, of course, but, as Dante said, you were not made to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge. That’s what I thought about when I visited the Tarot park.
The Emperor
You can’t visit the Tarot park without pausing at the Emperor.
Set within a visionary architecture of two levels opening onto an inner court, the Emperor is that big red and golden sculpture. The fourth card stands for man understood as masculine energy and power, and he’s placed in a kind of cloister much like Gaudí’s architecture at Park Güell: a central fountain, mirrors, majolica, columns, chessboards and skulls that recall those of the Mexican día de los muertos.
The Tower
Not far from the Emperor rises the Tower, the XVI arcanum.
It represents the Tower of Babel and, as Niki de Saint Phalle herself tells us, it’s a physical and mental construction that must be torn down in order to see beyond.
Torn down in what sense?
If you look up, you’ll find an iron sculpture representing the lightning that strikes and destroys it. I saw in it a bit of the representation of life: sometimes our certainties collapse, but only to be rebuilt on firmer ground. It’s one of the largest works in the whole Tarot park: the size is impressive and it really seems about to fall on you.
Judgement
Inside the chapel topped by Temperance there’s a depiction of Judgement, meant not only as the Last Judgment but also as a reckoning of human life.
It’s portrayed on a mirror with three different figures, which can be read as the three ages of man or as three people of different ethnicities (African, Asian and European), all before a tomb. Judgement is arcanum 20 and restates the idea of equality: we are all equal before death and the “higher” judgment.
The Chariot
The Chariot of the tarot stands for victory. The artist conceived this installation as a small sculpture inside the Empress-house.
The chariot of victory always makes me think of the one driven by Roman generals returning from war, acclaimed by the people. Behind the general, though, stood a servant who whispered “hominem te esse memento”, “remember that you are only a man”.
Why?
Because victory is a deceiver, and you must learn to ride the chariot without being swept away by it. A warning not to underestimate.
Temperance
Conceived as a private chapel, Temperance pours water between two jugs.
It stands for calm, responsibility, but also awareness and patience. It’s no coincidence that the XIV card of the major arcana is linked to recollection and introspection: it’s within ourselves, with patience and contemplation, that we’ll find peace. The chapel walls are covered in mirrors: I read it as yet another invitation to look inside ourselves.
What do you think?
The Moon
The sculpture of the Moon disappointed me a little, I admit.
This card, number 18, is a crescent from which a female profile emerges, held up by a sort of crab or lobster: it reminded me of Dalí’s works. Its depiction also recalls the zodiac sign of Cancer and, at the same time, water, to which the moon is always tied. The card’s meaning is imagination, also in the sense of estrangement from reality. There are two dogs below, too. I don’t know, maybe I didn’t fully grasp it: it left me unsatisfied.
Death
Death is card 13. It’s one of those that usually frightens most but, in reality, it stands for a profound change that’s about to arrive.
Every day a part of us dies to make room for something new: it’s true for ideas, for society, for generations. Death is a democratic equaliser, even if it can look merciless: in Niki de Saint Phalle’s imagination it rides a starry steed and mows down everything, animals, plants and human beings. It’s above all things and always on the move.
The Devil
This sculpture is as unsettling as what it represents.
The Devil of the tarot is linked to earthly pleasures like sex, but also to substance use and loss of control. It’s the opposite of the Lovers card, the one that offered a choice: here the choice was plainly a wrong one.
The Fool
Voids and solids, colours out of place and great dynamism characterise the deck’s card without a number, the Fool.
Depicted in the garden as a wayfarer or a jester, the Fool is the one who has detached himself from all that is earthly and wanders in search of something higher and unreachable. Not by chance it’s card 0, or XXII: the beginning or the ultimate fulfilment.
Or both things at once?
The World
The last sculpture of the Tarot park is the World. It’s also the last card, the XXI.
What does it symbolise?
The World stands for life, creation, fulfilment. The artist portrays it as an egg, symbol of life and perfection, wrapped by a serpent that recalls the caduceus of medicine but above all the ouroboros, the serpent biting its own tail, symbol of infinity. A mechanism turns the sculpture, which seems to ascend upwards. It’s the end of the initiatory, inner journey this so visionary and original artist left us.
The other sculptures of the Tarot Garden
The garden doesn’t end with the tarot cards and the meanings we can read into them.
If you pay attention, along the path you’ll find other minor installations, like the Oracle or Ricardo the cat. Even the plaque at the entrance tells you about the artist’s project, her vision of life and art, as well as tarot and esotericism. The links between her sculpture-architectures, the path winding among floors covered with phrases, signatures, poems, hieroglyphs and chessboards: it’s all part of an utterly visionary project.
One thing is certain: for me it was an incredible source of inspiration and reflection.
Will it be for you too?
How to get to the Tarot Garden
The Tarot Garden isn’t well signposted, but it’s not far from Capalbio, in Tuscany, in the locality of Garavicchio, near Pescia Fiorentina (province of Grosseto).
From Rome it’s simple: take the E80 (Aurelia) heading north; the motorway from Civitavecchia is very handy too. If you’d rather not drive, a tour of the Tarot Garden and Capalbio departing from Civitavecchia brings you here with a guide, handy especially if you arrive by cruise.
Tarot Garden: tickets and opening times
The entrance ticket costs 15 euros (full) and 10 euros (reduced, for children aged 7-16, over-65s and groups). The garden is usually open from 1 April to 15 October, in the afternoon (roughly from 2:30 pm to 7:30 pm, with last admission a little earlier). Tickets are sold online only, not on site, and the daily number of visitors is capped: book ahead. Checked in August 2026 on the official Tarot Garden website.
I’m no expert in tarot and esotericism, so I think I grasped only a tenth of the meaning the artist wanted to give this park. But as an art lover I can assure you that her sculptures are beautiful even for those who, like me, haven’t yet gone deep into the subject.
