Remilio da Re, Casa del Castello / Castle House

all images courtesy of Giada Carraro

The castle-like structure depicted above is situated in a garden near a house in Orsago, a small municipality located in the province of Treviso, Italy.

The city, with somme 3700 inhabitants (2003) is situated about 60 kilometers north of Venice.

 Life and works

The structure was created single-handedly by Remilio da Re, who was born in 1927 and died in 2003.

He was married and the couple had a few daughters.

Remilio da Re had a job as a bricklayer, working for a construction company, where he resigned in the 1960s for health reasons.

A castle-like creation

The 1960s were also the period in which he devoted himself fully to the construction of a castle-like structure, situated in the front garden of his house. For the construction, he used cement, mortar, and stone.

The castle-like building rests on a sturdy concrete foundation, and the images in this post clearly show that the castle is not only equipped with numerous entrance doors and various windows, but that spread over the entire structure of the creation it features several round towers and various pointed roofs.

As farm as is known, the design is not based on a structure located elsewhere that served as a model and source of inspiration, but the de Casa del Castello as a whole stems from the creative mind of Remilio da Re.

The castle-like creation does not stand on its own, but is surrounded by a number of smaller creations.

The family and descendants of Remilio la Re ensure the continued existence of his creations after his passing.

Documentation

* Article by Giada Carraro, about Remilio da Re on her website Bric-á-Brac Italia. (As far as I could ascertain, this is the only publication on the internet  about the creation).

Remilio da Re

Castle House

Orsago, region Treviso, Italy

Corrado Bricchi, Il muro dei sogni / The wall of dreams

this image and the next three as on Facebook, 
published here in agreement with Veneto Segreto

Jesolo is a city in northern Italy, located in the Veneto region, at the mouth of the Plave and Sile rivers.

It boasts a beautiful beach and charming streets, making it a popular destination for many European tourists, especially those wishing to visit nearby Venice.

Life and works

Jesolo is also home to the Wall of Dreams, an art environment characterized, as the images show, by an explosion of colors and shapes.

The art environment was conceived in 1997 when Corrado Bricchi, a resident of Jesolo who worked as a cook in the local hospital, wanted to cover a damp patch on the exterior wall of his house. He tried to cover the stain with white paint, but when that didn't work, he covered it with an image of a boat on a blue sea.

That helped. 

In fact, passersby found the boat so charming that they took pictures of it.

This inspired Bricchi, who was interested in art, to go beyond just the boat and give the entire wall a colorful look. 

Thus, the Wall of Dreams was born.

It has become a multi-coloured decoration, made up of dozens of individual elements, often provided with small informative texts on white plaques.

Corrado Bricchi appreciates the interest shown in his work by passersby. Therefore, in addition to the main section of the art environment, he has created a separate corner called Agendina del Sole (Solar Agenda), which invites passersby to pause and take a photo of themselves standing in front of the artwork.

Documentation

* Entry on the website Costruttori di Babele, with a variety of images

*Article by Giada Carraro on her website Bric-a-Brac, also with a variety of images

* Article (December 2018) on the Facebook account.of Veneto Segreto

* Article (May 2024) on the local newspaper Veneto Orienhtale Informazione

Corrado Bricchi

The wall of dreams

21 Via Ada Negri

30016 Jesolo, region Veneto, Italy

can be seen from the street

Dominique le Paih, Jardin de l'harmonie / Garden of Harmony

images courtesy of Sophie Lepetit, from hetr weblog

The Garden of Harmony is an art environment that is located in Pluméliau-Bieuzy, a municipality with approximately 4,600 inhabitants (January 2023) in the center of the Morbihan department in Bretagne,  France.

The community was formed on January 1, 2019 by the merger of the municipalities of Bieuzy and Pluméliau.

Life and works

This decorated garden has been created by Dominique le Paih, who was born in the early 1950s and nowadys is pensionated. 

During his working life, he was a plumber and heating engineer.

He built his house in Pluméliau-Bieuzy with his own hands and when that was finished, in his spare time he built a turret in the backyard of his house..

Subsequently, he spent three years constructing a barbecue facility, which took on the distinctive shape of a structure consisting of two towers and a surrounding wall, giving the whole thing the allure of a castle.

Apparently, occupying himself with all kinds of construction work in his spare time, pleased him so much, that in the early 1990s, when he was about forty years old, he took the direction of embellishing the garden with more artistic creations.

So without any formal artistic training, he began making all kinds of stone sculptures, as can be seen in the surrounding photos.

Working with granite from the quarries of Le Saint, near Le Faouët, the garden of Dominique le Paih acquired a special allure, which, as stated in the article on Sophie Lepetite's blog, is "a living, constantly evolving work of art, a place where nature and imagination come together to form a poetic and inspiring universe."

In addition to the large-scale creation of the barbecue, the garden features a large number of smaller creations, such as a large fish, a statue of Venus, and also a relic of the famous Brussels Manekken Pis.

Walls are decorated with Chinese figures and all kinds of animals such as owls, scorpions and dragons.

 Other creations are imitations of statues on Easter Island.

Dominique le Paih is still actively working on expanding the collection.

The site is regulalary open to visitors.

Documentation

* Article (March 14, 2026) on the weblog of Sophie Lepetit

* Article (June 2025) in newspaper La Gazette

* Article (June 2025) in newspaer Ouest-France

* Article (2025) on the website Open Agenda

Dominique le Paih

Garden of Harmony

72 Rue du stade 

56310 Pluméliau-Bieuzy, dept Morbihan, region Bretagne, France

Odd Einar, Skulpturer langs en vei langs en fjord / Sculptures along a road along a fjord

this image as on Google Streetview

The scene above and the one below are part of an art environment, located near Kornstad,  a small town in the coastal area in western Norway.

The town is part of the municipality of Averøya, located on the Kornstadfjorden.

this image also as on Google Streetview

Life and works

The sculptures, situated at various locations along the road along the fjord near Kornstad, have been created by Odd Einar, assisted by his wife Monica, a couple that lives in a house near these sculptures.

Odd Einar was a teacher at a local school for 41 years and is now retired.

this image and the next four courtesy of Sophie Lepetit, .

from her weblog (see documentation)

The image above and the following four were created by Sophie Lepetit from France, who traveled through Norway with her partner and, to her surprise, came across the sculptures.

Many more images can be seen on her weblog (see documentation)..

The numerous creations along the road are made of wood, mostly tree trunks, and appear to have been shaped with a chainsaw.

They depict classical figures, such as the Viking in the very first image. 

This image also shows multiple people with colorful painting applied by Einar's partner.

But besides that, there are numerous other sculptures, mostly not painted in color, such as, to quote the article on Sophie Lepetit's weblog "reindeer with exuberant antlers, enormous bears, stately deer, a crocodile, an angel, eagles, a penguin, apples, trolls, owls......"

Although the sculptures are largely scattered throughout the area along the road, their design and appearance undoubtedly form a coherent whole.

Located along a section of the route that has a unique character due to its location along the fjords of Norway, this art environment attracts many tourists traveling along this route..

Documentation

* Article (May 16, 2026) on the weblog of Sophie Lepetit

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Odd Einar

Sculptures along a road along a fjord

Village of Kornstad, Municipality of Averøy, region Møre og Romsdal, Norway

can be seen from the road

Pinuccio Sciola, Giardino Sonoro / Garden with sounding stones

all images courtesy of Sophie Lepetit, as on her weblog
see documentation

The Giardino Sonoro is a park in San Sperate, a village in southern Sardinia. 

This park can be seen as an art environment, since it contains a collection of stone structures, all made by hand by the same artist. Some of these structures have the special property of producing a musical sound when touched or struck in the right way;

Life and works

These stone structures were created by Pinuccio Sciola (1942-2016), who was born in San Sperate, where he also continued to live once he was an adult.

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He developed as an artist, got training in Madrid, Paris and Salzburg, and participated in the Venice Biennale.

Although this weblog in principle only focuses on non-professionals, it is primarily the unique musical qualities of his stone creations that provide the reason to devote attention in this blog to Sciola's work in stone,

The exception is also appropriate because he was deeply connected to his native Sardinia, and his artistic expressions were modest in nature and related to nature and to his native Sardinia.

This is also evident from the sculptural contribution he made from the 1960s onwards to the Giardino Sonore, a park that was the first in Sardinia to acquire an artistic character.

In 1968 Sciola was in Paris when the student uprising began, which spread to large parts of the population. 

He was struck by the power and creativity of the events, and once back in San Sperate, he wanted to give his hometown the appearance of a museum city by painting walls with white lime and inviting artists to create murals on them. 

He referred to those years as the Lime Years.

In 1996 Sciola began researching how sculptures might produce  sounds. 

So he selected primarily large pieces of basalt and volcanic stone.which are porous and in which a variety of grooves can be carved. These stones, thus processed, can produce special sounds upon touch.

 

The first musical stone that Sciola demonstrated in public was named Jazz Stone and was played at a jazz festival together with a trumpeter and a percussionist..

Pinuccio Sciola died on May 13, 2016. 

Residents of San Sperate hung white sheets and curtains in front of their windows and balconies in his memory.

 Documentation

* .Article (May 2026) on the weblog of Sophie Lepetit

* Article (September 2025) on newspaper Vanity Fair

* Article on Wikipedia

Video

* Video  (published January 2019) with Sciola playing stones and scenes of the garden

Pinuccio Sciola

Garden with sounding stones

San Sperate, Sardinia, Italy 

the public garden with sculptures can be visited freely

Guido Zuliani, Jardin de sculptures / Sculpture garden

images published here in agreement with 
Thierry de Baillon, weblog Tipeek Photos

Ligny-Thilloy is a municipality with over 500 inhabitants (2023 census), located in the department of Pas-de-Calais in the Hauts-de-France region in the northwest of France.

Along the Rue de Miraumont lies a house with a street-facing front garden that is decorated with a number of creations, as can be seen in the image above.

Life and works

These creations were made by Guido Zuliani, who was born in Italy in December 1919 and migrated to France, where he worked as a bricklayer.

As the image at the very top shows, the garden does not include a large number of creations This is also becaue over the years some have been stolen or given away to feature in other gardens

Zuliani passed away in September 1996 and since then the artworks are maintained and regularly repainted by Zuliani's daughter, who does so with attention and love.

Some details of the creations in this site. 

The second image from the top shows a monkey riding an elephant.

The garden features a number of columns of twisted bricks, and a stork is situated on one of those columns, as can be seen in the image above left.

The image to the right of the stork shows a man walking around with a pot of succulents.

The image below shows an animal that looks like a large salamander.

Documentation

* Article (April 2026) by Thierry de Baillon, website Tipeek Photos

* Article (May 2012) by Larent Jacquy on his website Les beaux dimanches

Guido Zuliani

Sculpture garden

16 rue de Micaumont

62450 Ligny-Thailloy, dept Pas-de-Calais, region Hauts-de-France, France

can be seen from the street

Fernand Garanto, Jardin de sculptures / Sculpture garden

all images courtesy of Donminque Clement

The garden with sculptures reviewed in the following article is located in Limoux, a municipality with approximately 10,500 inhabitants in the Aude department in the Occitanie region of France.

Lifen and works

The sculptures are creations made by Fernand Garanto, who was born iin Limoux in the late 1940s.

His career was initially quite remarkable, for when he was only sixteen years old, he became a professional stuntman, part of one of the biggest teams in France at the time.

He would be active there for a long time, but after twenty years and many broken bones, he had to quit.

His next job, which he started in the mid-1980s, was much more subdued, as he became a civil servant at the municipality of Limoux. Although that was a much quieter environment, he could still occasionally express himself as a boisterous character, especially during Carnival.

And as a self-taught artist, he also developed a passion for creating sculptures.

By then he was married, and the couple lived outside the center of Limoux in a house with a garden of about 3,000 square meters, which,certainly after his retirement around 2014,  began to be filled with his creations, as in part can be seen in part in the surrounding images.

They show sculptures made of terracotta, plaster, and white cement with marble dust.

Garanto's  studio is completely filled with all kinds of sculptures and he gladly accepts requests from friends to create sculptures displaying specific types of people.

As a self-taught artist, he is sometimes amazed by what comes from his hands, such as his ability to capture certain gestures in his creations.

He has also established himself as a writer by now, like in March 2024, he published a book entitled Entre Action et Passion: mémoires d'un cascadeur professionnel (Between Action and Passion: Memoirs of a Professional Stuntman), that reveals the secrets of the techniques and methods stunt performers use to achieve breathtaking feats safely.

Documentation

* Garanto on Facebook

* Article (Januarfy 2019) in French newspaper l'Indepandant

* Article  (October 2024) in French newspepr Le Petit Journal

Video

On YouTube Fernand Garanto has a collection of some eight short videos that give an impression of the kind of creations he makes.

* Here is a video (3.03 minutes) from this collection, made in 2018 at the occasion of the Carnaval de Limoux

Fernand Garanto 

Sculpture Garden

17 Chemin de la Serre de Cournanel 

11300 Limoux, dept Aude, region Occitanie, France