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Forestiere completed his tunnels and grottoes with a “room” one hundred feet long and thirty-five feet wide. Some have called this an auditorium or a dance hall.28 No one is certain what Forestiere intended. The “room” contrasts with the intimate nature of the rest of the chambers. But observers of the “room” fail to take into account that originally there was no roof on the space. After Forestiere’s death, Giuseppe, who scavenged the trusses from an abandoned airplane hangar at a local airfield, added the roof, windows, and flooring.29 Without the roof, it can be read as one more iconic representation of an important aspect of the life that Forestiere left behind him in Sicily: the communal life of Filari. In Forestiere’s Underground Gardens, it serves as the “piazza,” the place of communal gathering. The “piazza” is yet another aspect of Forestiere’s recollections of his youth in Filari not accessible to him in his remote and isolated location on the far north end of Fresno.

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The interplay between light and darkness is a central feature of the Underground Gardens. Between the hours of nine in the morning and three in the afternoon, sunlight shines through the skylights of the various grottoes and permeates the “Sunrise Patio,” the “Sunset Patio,” and the larger garden area on the west end of the site. From late spring to late autumn in Fresno, before the shortened winter days and fog return to the valley, throughout the grottoes there is a contrasting display of sunlight and shadows. The Underground Gardens have a monastic-like atmosphere conducive to retrospection. Yet they also capture, at least for part of the day and part of the year, the light of the countryside surrounding them. The contrast between light and darkness characterizes Baldassare Forestiere’s inner and outer life. At night he dug his grottoes, recalling his past, and by day, as a successful valley farmer in Fresno, he labored in the full sun of his vineyards.