Story
This park, known as the “Garden of Wonders”, was created by Arturo Scherrer (1881-1956), a cloth merchant, keen traveller and lover of art and culture.
The Park (called Garden 'Folly') houses a rich collection of works of art from many different countries and periods, surrounded by luxuriant planting, constructions and examples of various kinds of art from all over the world.
Examples are the 1:4 scale model of the Erechtheus, the second temple in the Athens Acropolis, the Indian palace, which is a copy of Palazzo Salò at Brugine near Padova, and the Egyptian Temple dedicated to Nefertiti, of which the interior is an exact copy of the original in Berlin.
A faithful reproduction of a typical fourteenth century Ticino-Lombard house near the entrance, now converted into a grotto-restaurant, was included by Scherrer to show his fondness for the Ticino area.
This Eden overhanging the waters of Lake Ceresio is immersed in an astounding world of subtropical flora consisting of palms, camellias, wisterias, cedars, cypresses, camphors, eucalyptus, magnolias, azaleas, lemons, bamboos and many species of scented flowering plants, to attract and enchant visitors.
The park was left to the Morcote Municipality by Scherrer's widow in 1965, with an explicit request to open it to the public, and is kept as it was originally conceived by the Scherrer family, with further embellishments to make it even more suitable for highly successful cultural and historical events.
