Franco Maria Ricci and Jorge Luis Borges

The idea to create the Labyrinth arose from the encounter and friendship between Franco Maria Ricci and one of the greatest 20th-century poets and writers, the Argentine Jorge Luis Borges. The two met for the first time in 1974, when Franco Maria Ricci decided he wanted to actually meet the author whose work he admired so much, and who had already written important texts for him. In addition to working as his young editor, Borges became a close friend of Ricci. While strolling through the eld where the Labyrinth now lies, Franco Maria Ricci told the writer that sooner or later he would build a labyrinth, the biggest one in the world. Borges, the writer "of real and imaginary, allegorical and infinite labyrinths" replied that it would not be possible, since the largest labyrinth in the world is the desert.