Go back to childhood with Pinocchio: its park is a few kilometres from your farmhouse

Rest, nature, good food and, why not, fun. In Tuscany, fun passes through the Parco Collodi, a park dedicated to Pinocchio and placed in Collodi di Pescia, in the province of Pistoia, just 37 km from Podere Jana. Forget the traditional amusement parks: in this one, you will have the feeling of personally experiencing the fairy tale in an enchanted place suspended in time and made of art, architecture and game. Do you think only children would enjoy it? You are wrong: this park is designed for and usable by everyone. Over seven million visitors (adults and children) have been visiting the park from 1956 (opening year) until now and they are the proof of this.

This is for you a unique opportunity to discover – or re-discover – the great book written by Carlo Lorenzini, the Adventures of Pinocchio, to which Parco Collodi is completely dedicated: in this little village around Pistoia, the author spent his childhood and from here he drew his pseudonym. Seventy-nine years after the first instalment of the fairy tale, they created the first commemorating park, which was once made of a little forest of oaks around a paved square. The park gives you the opportunity of walking, having fun and relaxing yourself in a unique context, going back in time and feeling the same emotions you felt when you were a child, which are now amplified by finding yourself face to face with the characters of this book, that is considered as the most loved and known Italian book worldwide. Did you read it, didn’t you? Rest assured that after spending a day among the green lanes of the park will make you want to read it again.

As years passed by, the Park of Pinocchio has been considerably enlarged without changing some of its distinctive features, which imprinted it in the heart and mind of many people: so near the entrance you can still find Emilio Greco’s sculpture Pinocchio and the Fairy, placed in a flower-bed shaped like the image of the famous puppet; the Little Mosaic Square still keeps the mosaics of Venturino Venturi, the Village of Pinocchio still presents several sculptures such as the Carabiniere, the Cat and the Fox, the Snake and the Big Shark. All this demonstrates that, despite the changes and expansions applied to this area, the park has remained firmly connected to the classic children’s books, that adults too love to read again.

Inside its perimeter you will find the Osteria del Gambero Rosso, which has been the restaurant of the park since 1963, or the Pinocchio Museum, with its amazing exhibitions of collection or works of art and illustrations, costumes and theatre sceneries dedicated to the puppet. You can also find Pinocchio’s virtual library, where by touching a screen you can discover the several sides and translations of Pinocchio around the world; moreover there are the “Play and Learn” workshops, the Story-tellers shows, the art and movement games and the antique carrousels.

Do you want to visit it? Here you are some useful information: from the 1st of May to the 1st of November – the high season – the park is open every day from 8:30 a.m. all day long until sunset. During the rest of the year (from the 2nd of November up to the 28th of February) it is open all day long only on public holidays and pre-holidays (the other days of the week it is open on booking) from 10:00 a.m. until sunset.