Monica Bernacchia
Today, the Garden on the Hill of “Infinito” of Recanati is a FAI property and is a place full of scents, colors, and inspiration, where poetry, history, and nature intertwine in an oasis of serenity. As its name suggests, it is in an elevated position in a medieval village which owes much of its popularity to a young poet of 19th-century named Giacomo Leopardi.
Even before being the setting for Leopardi’s “Infinito”, it was the garden orchard of the Monastery of Santo Stefano: the convent with the hortus conclusus was built in the sixteenth century on this hill, at that time called Mount Tabor.
In 1810, the garden and its monastery were abandoned due to Napoleon’s suppression of religious orders. Great history burst into the life of young Giacomo. Due to circumstances and temperament, and like many twenty-year-olds seeking a place of his own to isolate himself and indulge his passions, he found free access to this abandoned garden, adjacent to his home. On this ermo colle (lonely hill), in the spring or autumn of 1819, he set a poem that still resonates powerfully in the hearts of so many young people who yearn to go beyond, to think beyond: l’Infinito (The infinity). At that time, perhaps the nota siepe (known hedge) was there, or perhaps, as today, it consisted of the high perimeter walls surrounding the garden blocking the poet’s gaze from l’ultimo orizzonte (the last horizon). And those walls led him to imagine the silence and quiet down there, far away, where the mountains dominate, and to be almost frightened, and then return to the rustling of the garden plants and, in this movement of thoughts, to intuit, to perceive infinity. Today, that infinito gives its name to this hill, the place where the poet had an epiphany.
Then, history tells us that the religious orders were re-established and the monastery reopened in the mid-19th century as a home for novices and a boarding school, then as an orphanage and a girls’ boarding school for the daughters of emigrants from Recanati until its closure in 1992. After years of abandonment, the hill was opened to the public in 2002 and, following an important project of recovery and restoration, inaugurated in 2019 as the first FAI property in the Marche.
The Path of Discovery
There is a well-defined path of discovery.
To enter the FAI Garden, we must journey through Leopardi’s words and life, passing through the Piazzetta del Sabato del Villaggio, where Silvia’s house overlooks, reminding the famous poem dedicated to her, as Casa Leopardi still inhabited by his heirs.
After a short climb, via a grand staircase and a white travertine doorway, we enter a three-story red brick building – built between 1940 and 1962- venue of the National Center for Leopardi Studies, which gives access to the Garden on the Collina dell’Infinito (Hill of Infinity). We immediately sense the austere elegance of its rigorous style, with walnut furniture, marble floors, and antique Murano glass chandeliers. All this is tempered by the colorful and valuable selection of the FAI ticket office and bookshop, where you can find not only books on poetry and plants, but also a selection of seeds, unique papers, pens, and much more.
In the close library room, three multimedia tables allow visitors to reconstruct the history of the site through images, photographs, and historical documents – mostly drawn from the archives of the National Center for Leopardi Studies – representing the history of the building, the institution, and the scientific activity conducted there. These documents also include glimpses, plans, and views of the ancient village of Recanati and the Garden with the Monastery of Santo Stefano. Here, much of the Study Center’s collection is already visible, housed in nine walnut cabinets: over 30,000 bibliographical items, also housed in other rooms and on the upper floors, including essays, undergraduate and graduate theses, monographs, periodicals, newspaper articles, and musical compositions, as well as approximately 500 manuscripts, mostly dating back to the 18th century, plus audiovisual material from the 1980s onward.
The path continues on the lower floor: through five rooms separated by sound-absorbing curtains, visitors are immersed in the poem “L’infinito” (The Infinity) through a succession of images and the voices of Lella Costa and Massimo Popolizio. The narrative retraces the verses, attempting to explain the poet’s experience, which is then recounted in the poem, to bring us closer to his thought and sensibility. Finally, in a small room, visitors can record their own version of “L’infinito” and upload it to the website www.fainfinito.it.
Returning to the library room, you enter the exterior where, after a short path, you reach the perimeter of the garden orchard, shaped almost like a trapezium, surrounded by walls. Here, the architectural complex of the ancient monastery still stands: today, it houses a civic music school, an auditorium, the headquarters of the World Poetry Center, and a vocational school.
Strolling, touching, smelling, gazing, listening: multisensory experiences are inherent in this space, inhabited not only by visitors, fans, scholars, and writers, but also by gardeners who daily tend the garden, restored thanks to a project by landscape architect Paolo Pejrone. An ecosystem of cypress trees, fruit trees, vegetables, flowers, and rows of vines intertwined with pergolas, paths of white gravel pavement, and two 100-square-meter plots cultivated according to tradition, with ancient seeds, vegetables, and flowers. A place suspended between poetry and nature, between words and the earth.
Appointment in the Garden
The Garden on the Hill of Infinity, the National Center for Leopardi Studies, and the Omero State Tactile Museum jointly participated in the “Appointment in the Garden” initiative, organized on June 6 and 7, 2026, by APGI – Association of Parks and Gardens of Italy, with the theme “Sight.”
This successful collaboration resulted in a multisensory visit, “Beyond Sight”, enjoyed on a sunny, windy, and pleasant morning. Among the participants were blind and visually impaired people from the UICI of Macerata, led by the lively President Bruna Giampieri.
The tour began in the Study Center’s library. Sitting around a table, we introduced the initiative and the resources available, including the tactile audio guide that the Omero Museum has already created for the FAI Garden. This is a pocket-sized booklet, A5 size, to be carried along with the audiopen in a cotton bag during the visit consulting it at strategic points. The booklet contains embossed drawings, braille titles, and stickers on which to place the audiopen to listen to the content. Like this article, it is designed to better describe the FAI property to a visually impaired audience. The guide distributed in multiple copies around the table clarified, through the embossed drawings, some interesting and curious elements such as the map of the garden, the structure of the poem, and the poet’s handwriting thanks to embossed signature and title “L’Infinito”.
I also brought with me two life-size tactile versions of Leopardi’s profile, taken from Biagio Martini’s 1825 painting, created by the Museum staff. The first version, also featured in a smaller version in the tactile audio guide, is the relief drawing printed on a sheet of paper with heat-sensitive microcapsules. When slid into an infrared oven, the heat swells the microcapsules into the black ink lines, creating the relief. The second is an intaglio drawing: with artisanal skill and a precision cutter, the outlines of the figures to be removed from the surface are carved into the cardboard; the remaining space is filled with special textures, such as in this case, fabrics to differentiate the jacket, shirt, and neck scarf.
The narration continued with a talk by Gioele Marozzi of the National Center for Leopardi Studies, who conveyed to the audience his sincere passion for his work. While nineteenth-century editions passed from hand to hand, Gioele meticulously illustrated not only the value of their content, but also their material characteristics, from the paper to the type of binding. We learned, for example, that Leopardi, together with the Milanese publisher Stella, created the first “modern” anthology, that is, the collection of parts of literary works, now common in our schools.
We were fascinated by a handwritten letter sent by Giacomo to his father while he was in Bologna, which was found in the home of the daughter of the writer Paolo Volponi and later donated to the Study Center. The letter was embossed to allow blind people to appreciate its handwriting, which revealed Leopardi’s long, sharply drawn cursive.
Then, Silvia Del Vicario of FAI took the stage introducing us to the garden. We walked the white gravel pavement, felt the warmth of the sun-warmed walls, and lingered before aromatic plants like helichrysum and santolina, inhaling their scent and feeling the texture of their leaves. We listened to their benefits in phytotherapy. For example, helichrysum flowers—with their small, round, golden flower heads—are used to treat flu, while the cooked leaves release a scent of curry. Santolina, also known as crespolina, has thin, woody stems covered with small, closely spaced leaves that are downy to the touch and an excellent repellent against mosquitoes, flies, and parasites.
Then we stopped at the point that faces the “optical cone” of Infinity: here, the trunk of a historic cypress tree stands perhaps the same one Leopardi cited in one of his writings, now flanked by a younger cypress. We listened to “L’infinito” read by Vittorio Gassman on the audiopen. Using a ladder, we looked over the wall to discover a landscape made not only of sky and clouds but also of the green and brown of the hills with the clusters of villages at the tops of the curves and in the distance the profile of the Apennines, including the Monti Azzurri, as Leopardi called them now the Monti Sibillini. A moment of peace, quiet, and respite. The only child present, the grandson of a teacher who has lost his sight accepted the proposal to blindfold himself and enjoy the trail for a while through touch, smell, and hearing alone. Even today, there is no shortage of birdsong or the buzz of bumblebees at work.
During the walk, we discovered many other plants with all our senses, including the rare Pelargonium (a member of the geranium family), and shared impressions and memories: among the participants was also a lady who had frequented this place when it was still a boarding school.
We then returned to the initial library room, which also houses Ester Pasqualoni’s “L’infinito” in Braille. Those who wished could finally go down to the multimedia rooms.
In conclusion, the thanks of the participants in the “Beyond sight” path were profound and sincere and my thanks also go to the FAI represented by Alessandra Troilo and Silvia Del Vicario, and to the Centro Nazionale di Studi Leopardi represented by its president Fabio Corvatta and Gioele Marozzi. I also extend my thanks to my colleagues at the Omero Museum, with whom I shared the adventure of creating the audio-tactile guide: Manuela Alessandrini, Patrizia Calderone, Jimena Sterlacchini, and Massimo Gatto.
Postscript: As part of the same initiative, the following day, Sunday, June 7th, we hosted FAI staff at the Omero Museum to bring into dialogue aromatic plants and ancient seeds with the sea that surrounds us and our artworks. The story was further enriched by listening to “Music of Nature” thanks to “The Music of the Plants”: an instrument that translates the sap movements of plants into sound.