Off the A1 at Attigliano, 35 km south east of Orvieto. The very name expresses open-mouthed astonishment. Below the village and its towering fortress lies the Park of the Monsters (www.bomarzo.net/index_en.html) in a demesne of rough limestone and scrub. Casually scattered are follies and grotesqueries which Count Orsini in 1552 sculpted in situ from boulders. You can walk into the gaping granite mouth of the Mascherone (Great Mask) and take a seat at the dining-table – its stone tongue. Stone giants wrestle, elephants maul enormous Roman soldiers, an opulent Venus wears a plant-pot hat, a granite oak-tree is dwarfed by granite acorns, the fountain will not hold water, the Doric temple is a crazy house.

Was this laborious exercise in disproportion Orsini’s protest against the mannerism of his age? Did a hopeless passion for his neighbour Giulia Farnese unhinge his mind? His own words, inscribed at the entrance, tell us the monsters are there for fun. Those with tight lips and raised eyebrows, he says, should stay away.