Inside Venice’s Borges Labyrinth, reopening after a major restoration

If it is not Italy’s most beautiful labyrinth, it is certainly the only one that allows visitors to step inside the most enduring metaphor of Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges: the maze of The Garden of Forking Paths and The Library of Babel. Located on Venice’s San Giorgio Maggiore Island, the Borges Labyrinth was designed by British architect and diplomat Randoll Coate, renowned for his “portrait labyrinths” dedicated to historical figures. It was inaugurated in 2011 to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of Borges’ death. A lifelong admirer of Venice, Borges often described the city itself as a labyrinth. In the final years of his life, after losing his sight completely, he continued to imagine Venice as an endless maze of paths, reflections and memory.

Now, forty years after the writer’s death, this unique garden overlooking the Venetian lagoon is set to reopen following a conservation project promoted by Fondazione Giorgio Cini, which originally commissioned the labyrinth, together with PwC Italia, the project’s main sponsor through its “PwC for Culture” initiative.

Circular time, infinite paths of knowledge, libraries, mirrors, branching choices and riddles: throughout Borges’ work, the labyrinth is the central metaphor from which countless others emerge. Randoll Coate translated that literary universe into a landscape that is itself a puzzle. Viewed from above, the labyrinth spells out BORGES in capital letters. Hidden within its winding paths are references drawn from the author’s stories, including an hourglass, a walking stick, a tiger, a large question mark, the initials of Borges’ wife and many other symbolic details. Like Borges’ fiction, the garden only reveals itself by constantly shifting perspective.

After fifteen years, the approximately 3,200 boxwood plants (Buxus sempervirens) that shape the labyrinth had gradually lost their uniformity, making Coate’s original design increasingly difficult to read. The restoration focused exclusively on the vegetation, carefully restoring more than 1,150 metres of pathways without altering the original layout. The conservation work has returned clarity to the labyrinth’s geometry while preserving both its symbolic meaning and overall design. The Borges Labyrinth will reopen to the public on 10 July 2026.

Opening image: Borges’ Labyrinth. Photo by Matteo De Fina for the Giorgio Cini Foundation. Courtesy of the Giorgio Cini Foundation