Gropparello Castle is surrounded by a 20-hectare estate, divided into a centuries-old park, wild woods, valleys, vineyards, and overhangs on living rock. From the tower of the castle it can be seen how the latter dominates the incredible and unique landscape characterized by the dark mass of ophiolite, surmounted by the coniferous forest, and the overhang on which the castle stands.

Some paths wind around the castle: these are the ancient patrol walkways, which descend to the gorges of the stream; they are made up of small paths and stairways dug into the rock at the limits of which there is a botanical garden created towards the end of the 1800s, a time when the wild nature of the “ravine” was softened by the work of man; this botanical garden contains particularly rare species, now in the process of being cataloged, which were characteristic of the Italian garden of sixteenth-century inspiration and of the botanical garden according to the nineteenth-century conception.

The suggestive masses of ophiolite that form the foundations of the walls, and the spontaneous vegetation that arises between them, creating a dense shady wood, contribute to making the atmosphere full of magic.

What are the Vezzeno Gorges?

A path of beauty and emotions that tells us about the passage of time

All around the walls of the castle there is that suggestive path born as a walkway for the soldiers. In 1800, with a romantic taste for the mysterious Middle Ages and for the wild nature that upsets the soul, this fascinating path was transformed into a sort of inner path whose spiritual guides are trees and flowers.

The road enters the woods to the north, in the dark part bordered by the rocky wall of the Gorges which descend about 80 meters below the castle walls, where the Vezzeno, an ancestral capricious stream, bathes the banks of the valley of the ancient manor. Here, on the trail of the ancient Celts, the history of the Earth is discovered.

THE RISING ROSE MUSEUM ©

The Museo Della Rosa Nascente is located in this magical place, where dog roses and wild orchids have lived from distant times and is physically distributed throughout the castle park. It is a path of alchemical meaning, which accompanies every single person to the discovery of inner perfection through the evolution of colors, scents, lights and symbols. The garden now has 1200 rose plants with over 125 varieties, divided into 17 rose gardens, some of which in the courtyard of honor within the medieval walls. The planting of the last 7 rose gardens in the Magic Labyrinth has recently been completed, a path that descends right where a small valley widens upstream of the Vezzeno valley. Here the gaze is lost among the pioneer forest, the wildflowers and the endpapers of roses which, with languages ​​of different colors, conquer the wild nature of the gorges and open their corollas to the first dew and to the rays of the sun, which close to 13 ° rose garden bring the temperature 7 degrees higher than that found inside the crenellated walls, which as the crow flies are just over 700 meters away. The Magic Path winds its way towards the valley forming a labyrinth of hornbeams, sanguinelle, white privets, oaks, maritime pines, ash trees, hawthorns, cherry trees, wild blackthorns, jasmine, viburnums, dog roses and imperial maples.

The walk communicates the idea of ​​a dream world…. where the plants play with each other ... and the sequence of colors and shapes, in the alternation of full and empty spaces, in the variety of shapes and colors envelop the visitor in an intoxicating atmosphere perceptible with all the senses ...

The play of colors and the development of the garden partly vertically and partly horizontally creates exciting panoramic views. The rose plant is surrounded by aromatic plants with complementary colors and shapes in symbiosis or in contrast with each other; for example roses that sprout from lavender, or a climbing rose twisted to a poplar, or a climbing rose twisted to a willow tree, or a grape pergola with climbing roses.

The Hall of Fossils

Above the Limonaia there is a room called La Fratina, which today houses a showcase with the fossils found in this "fief".

The guided tour ends here, in admiration of what the upper Jurassic period has left us as a testimony