Theme park · Molfetta (BA) · 2009 — 2018

Miragica — Land of the Giants

A park where a book is a doorway, a shoe is a roof, a coffee pot is a monument.

Act one

The first theme park
in southern Italy.

In the early 2000s, Alfa Park S.p.A. — the Brescia-based holding that already runs Rainbow MagicLand in Valmontone — decides to invest in the South. The choice falls on Molfetta, a seaside town twenty kilometres from Bari, and on one hundred thousand square metres of surface. The planned investment is forty million euros: for southern Italy, this is the first themed amusement park of its scale.

The narrative concept is signed by art director Gianfranco Bollini — who comes from Gardaland and will later move to PortAventura. It is a tribute to Swift's Gulliver's Travels and to Alice in Wonderland: every visitor, on crossing the entrance, becomes a Lilliputian. Everything is gigantic. Books are doors, shoes are roofs, coffee pots are monuments, a cannon wrapped in rope serves as a lintel. The mascots — Samy, Lilù, Milò, Plum — are giant-children who guide visitors through 21 attractions, including Senzafiato: the first hydraulic launch coaster ever installed in Italy, 0 to 80 km/h in 2.2 seconds.

Official opening: April 3, 2009. Godmother Manuela Arcuri, with mayor Antonio Azzollini and bishop Luigi Martella in attendance. That evening, the first of the three seasonal live shows — Rock Show, The Secret of Miragica, Gigantica — on a 700-seat open-air theatre, with fifty robotic lights and rail-mounted scenery.

Park building portal: large arch with diamond geometric motif in aqua green and burgundy, twisted turquoise and red columns, oval window, black lamppost in the foreground — An entrance portal, diamond motifs

Cartoon facade with arched door and arched window on the first floor, with a large giant binocular crossing the composition, in an illustrated fairy-tale style. Oriental turban roofs in the background, roller coaster visible in the distance — An area of the park, seen from above

Detail of a fairy-tale facade: irregularly shaped golden stucco window frame, wall painted with turquoise circles, twisted red sculpted column, faux raw bricks — The cartoon painting, up close

Act two

We sculpt the
giants ourselves.

2008 is the year Creation Art enters the theme park world as a stable sector. Eight years after the company's beginnings (and thirteen after the release of Benigni's Pinocchio, which had been our first big fully in-house film), we take on a construction site of scenography on a territorial scale: no longer a single film set, but the facades, towers and sculpted roofs of an entire park.

The site photos — dated October, November and December 2008, six months before opening — tell the process of the giant-architectures: blocks of expanded polystyrene shaped by hand, lifted by crane, fixed to the load-bearing masonry, then coated in plaster and fibreglass, and finally finished in saturated cartoon colours — burgundy, aqua green, ochre, red. The dome of a small tower is lifted by telescopic crane, still white, and lowered into position. The first of Miragica's giants.

The park runs for nine seasons. Programming requires continuous investment that Alfa Park, after 2016, no longer has. The park closes at the end of the 2018 season. Liquidation late 2018, bankruptcy January 2021, sold at auction for 1.77 million euros in January 2023. Two accidental fires, in 2020, ravage the remaining structures.

A white onion-shaped tiled dome with spire, lifted by a green 'Holegno' telescopic crane in the construction yard. Workers on the ground guide the movement. Apulian sunset, raised dust — The polystyrene dome, October 13, 2008

Wide-angle view of the park site during cladding: two themed buildings under construction, scaffolding with a cage on the left, ground still sandy, workers at the back of the scene — The architectures being worked on, autumn 2008

Finished octagonal Mediterranean-style tower with copper onion dome and tiled roof. At its base a large decorated horizontal blue cannon. Cream-coloured walls sculpted to look like stone — The same tower, finished

Behind the scenes

When the object becomes
architecture.

The technical challenge of the Land of the Giants is not physical enlargement — that is only a matter of scale. It's the language: a cannon is no longer a weapon, it is a load-bearing beam. A coffee pot is no longer a utensil, it is a pediment. A shoe is no longer footwear, it is a roof. Every object requires the same process: a polystyrene block, hand modelling, fibreglass coating, painted patina in saturated cartoon colours.

Park facade with two large giant horizontal cannons — one green and one blue — suspended above a red building sculpted as fake stone, gilded decorations, tower with onion dome on the right. A worker in the foreground walks along the structure — The cannon-architecture, "fairy-tale war" themed park area.

Polystyrene to size

Every giant starts from a block of expanded polystyrene cut to size. The shapes — a book with the cover open, a cannon three metres long, a coffee pot two metres tall — are modelled by hand with the same technique stucco workers use for cinematic bas-reliefs. No automatic milling: the cut is the hot-knife cut, and the finishing is done with a small rasp.

Fibreglass and patina

Polystyrene alone cannot withstand the Apulian weather — summer sun, sea wind, winter humidity. For this reason it is coated in fibreglass, the same material as the Baarìa set transported to Tunisia a year earlier. The painted patina uses saturated colours — deep burgundies, aqua greens, turquoise blues — because the Apulian sun, in high season, bleaches softer tones.

Building the illusion

The difference between a generic park and a themed park lies in the degree to which the visitor forgets they are in a park. Miragica pushed this illusion: no flowerbeds, but plazas; no kiosks, but giants' palaces; no signage, but object-architectures. It's an aesthetic we at Creation Art know well: it comes from cinematic scenography applied outside the soundstage.

100,000 square metres of park · 21 attractions

40 M€ initial investment from Alfa Park

9 seasons open · from April 2009 to the end of 2018

Portal of a 'books' theme park area: a large open book standing on the left functioning as a passage arch, a clock with a two-metre-tall Roman dial on the right, in the background the red-green structures of a roller coaster — **The book-portals.** Childhood readings on a monumental scale: the open-book-shaped passage, the giant librarian's clock.

Detail of the roof of a shack with large white and green coffee pots placed on top, a large green terracotta amphora, in the foreground a metal sign of a street called 'Stazione' — **The monumental coffee pots.** Kitchen objects turned into architecture: the roof of a shack in a Mediterranean area.

Pirate area building: cream-coloured striped facade, on top of the roof two giant shoes, along the lintel a giant horizontal cannon wrapped in rope. Double door below, one wooden and one glass — **The shoes and the cannon.** The entrance to the pirate area: two shoes on the roof and a rope-wrapped cannon as a lintel.

Mid-distance view of a park area with painted cartoon facades, tower buildings with oriental onion domes, bridges, arches. In the background on the right, the red beams of the main roller coaster towering above the themed area — An inner plaza, with the roller coaster above the facades.

Park facade with two giant horizontal cannons — one green and one blue — above a red decorated building. Onion tower on the right, colored pipes with an artillery theme. — The cannon-architecture

Roof of a shack with two giant white coffee pots on top, one green, a large green terracotta amphora. In the background the red-green structure of the roller coaster. — The coffee pots on the roof

Building with two giant shoes on the roof and a giant horizontal cannon as a lintel. Mustard-colored striped facade, double wooden door. Likely pirate area. — The shoes and the cannon

In the amusement park market
not proposing any element of innovation
represents a major problem.

CGIL Bari, on the closure of Miragica MolfettaLive · January 2021

Tech sheet

One hundred thousand square metres in Molfetta

Miragica occupies 100,000 m² on via dei Portuali, in Molfetta, on the outskirts of Bari. It is the first theme park in southern Italy, and at its opening in 2009 the largest ever built south of Rome. The surface hosts twenty-one attractions, a 700-seat open-air theatre, themed dining areas and a lake area with a raft route.

Twenty-one attractions, one extra

Among the twenty-one attractions, the most remembered is Senzafiato: the first hydraulic launch coaster ever installed in Italy, capable of taking the car from a standstill to 80 km/h in 2.2 seconds. Alongside it, Per Bacco — a 47-metre drop tower — and Girabugia, a rotating disk'o coaster. For children: the Battle of the Giants, a water-spray route through the themed squares.

Forty million in investment

Alfa Park S.p.A. of Brescia — the same holding that already runs Rainbow MagicLand in Valmontone — invests about forty million euros in the construction of the park between 2007 and its opening in 2009. Art direction of the "Land of the Giants" concept: Gianfranco Bollini, formerly at Gardaland and later at PortAventura. Official mascots: Samy, Lilù, Milò, Plum.

Nine seasons, then the closure

The park remains open for nine seasons, from April 3, 2009 to the end of 2018. The closure comes after years of failed renewal: a wave pool had been announced in 2016, never built. Liquidation late 2018; bankruptcy declared by the Brescia Court in January 2021. Two accidental fires in 2020 ravage the remaining structures. In January 2023, the complex is sold at the fifth auction for 1.77 million euros.

All production data

Type: Theme park · first theme park in southern Italy
Location: Via dei Portuali, Molfetta (Bari) · 100,000 m²
Official opening: April 3, 2009
Permanent closure: End of 2018 season
Ownership / management: Alfa Park S.p.A. (Brescia) · Miragica S.p.A. — same holding as Rainbow MagicLand
Art direction: Gianfranco Bollini (formerly Gardaland, then PortAventura)
Mascots: Samy · Lilù · Milò · Plum (giant-children)
Narrative concept: "Land of the Giants" — Gulliver among the Lilliputians · Alice in Wonderland
Attractions: 21 including Senzafiato (first hydraulic launch coaster in Italy, 0-80 km/h in 2.2 s) · Per Bacco (drop tower 47 m) · Girabugia (disk'o coaster) · Spaccatempo (spinning coaster) · Condor · GiraVolta · Virus (horror) · Battle of the Giants
2009 live shows: Rock Show · The Secret of Miragica · Gigantica (700-seat open-air theatre)
Inauguration: Godmother Manuela Arcuri · with Antonio Azzollini (mayor), Luigi Martella (bishop), Emilio Solfrizzi, Rossella Brescia in attendance
Initial investment: ~40 million euros (Alfa Park S.p.A.)
Creation Art site: October — December 2008: production of the themed architectures (cannons, book-portals, coffee pots, shoe-roofs, Mediterranean towers). Technique: hand-sculpted blocks of expanded polystyrene, coated in fibreglass, finished in saturated cartoon colours.
Parent holding: Alfa Park · same ownership as Rainbow MagicLand at the time of opening
Subsequent events: Liquidation late 2018 · bankruptcy January 2021 · two fires 2020 · auction January 2023 (€1,774,000)
Second life: Park no longer in operation today · but the scenography remains in Apulia, awaiting a new buyer to reopen the site

Second life

A closed park,
awaiting a buyer.

Miragica — the park of wishes had a short commercial life. Opened in 2009 by the Alfa Park holding (the same as Rainbow MagicLand), it enters liquidation at the end of 2018 and in January 2021 declares bankruptcy. In between, two fires in 2020 damage some park areas. In January 2023, the park is put up for auction with a starting value of €1,774,000.

For us, it remains a page of our work for the theme parks of southern Italy, in a period — the second half of the 2000s — when Alfa Park was building a small network of Italian amusement parks. Rainbow MagicLand took a different path and is still in operation; Miragica, no.