Hortus Conclusus, Installation artwork in Benevento, Italy.

Hortus Conclusus is an installation by Mimmo Paladino, made in 1992 with architect Roberto Serino, architect Pasquale Palmieri and lighting designer Filippo Cannata in a vegetable garden of the Convento di San Domenico in Benevento, entered at the end of Vico Noce off Corso Garibaldi. Partly enclosed by convent walls, the rest by brick walls with irregular inserts of stone and bronze, it has paving recalling the historic alleys of the Benevento area, fragments of columns, capitals and pediments, and a bronze horse on the boundary wall wearing a golden mask.

The work was created in 1992 by artist Mimmo Paladino along with architects Roberto Serino and Pasquale Palmieri, who transformed an old vegetable garden into an open-air museum. A complete restoration in 2005 renewed the bronze sculptures and reactivated the water features for the public.

The name comes from the Latin for "enclosed garden", a term found in medieval writings inspired by gardens in Genesis and the Gospels, where ascetics withdrew to meditate. Paladino also drew on Benevento's Samnite and Lombard past: bronze helmets and a shield-fountain set into the paving refer to the Samnites, while the brick boundary walls echo the city's Lombard walls. The plants carry meaning too: rose for divine blood, lily for purity, palm for glory.

The garden opens at the end of Vico Noce, reached from Corso Garibaldi. The ground is paved like the historic alleys of the Benevento area, with irregular stones and bronzes underfoot, so watch your step. A red architectural structure at the back has a terracotta-paved terrace reached by a corridor, where a totem stands.

The large disc that seems to have fallen from the sky is not at the centre but driven into the paving, curving it, and it doubles as a fountain: water springs from its top and collects in a basin whose handles are polished by use. Scattered helmets recall the Samnites, and a bronze horse on the boundary wall wears a golden mask like Agamemnon's.