The Villa del Balbianello is a

villa A villa is a type of house that was originally an ancient Roman upper class country house. Since its origins in the Roman villa, the idea and function of a villa have evolved considerably. After the fall of the Roman Republic, villas became s ...

in the

comune The (; plural: ) is a local administrative division of Italy, roughly equivalent to a township or municipality. It is the third-level administrative division of Italy, after regions ('' regioni'') and provinces ('' province''). The can ...

of Lenno ( province of Como), a province in the north of the Lombardy region of

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

, overlooking

Lake Como Lake Como ( it, Lago di Como , ; lmo, label=Western Lombard, Lagh de Còmm , ''Cómm'' or ''Cùmm'' ), also known as Lario (; after the la, Larius Lacus), is a lake of glacial origin in Lombardy, Italy. It has an area of , making it the thir ...

. It is located on the tip of the small wooded peninsula of Dosso d'Avedo on the western shore of the south-west branch of Lake Como, 1500 meters east from the

Isola Comacina Isola Comacina is a small wooded island of Italy’s Lake Como, administratively a part of the comune, commune of Ossuccio. It is located close to the western shore of the Como arm of the lake in front of a gulf known as ''Zoca de l'oli'', a Lomba ...

. The villa is famous for its elaborate terraced gardens.

History

Franciscan , image = FrancescoCoA PioM.svg , image_size = 200px , caption = A cross, Christ's arm and Saint Francis's arm, a universal symbol of the Franciscans , abbreviation = OFM , predecessor = , ...

monastery had existed on the tip of the peninsula of Dosso d'Avedo since the 13th century. The two towers which remain on the property are the remnants of the

campanili A bell tower is a tower that contains one or more bells, or that is designed to hold bells even if it has none. Such a tower commonly serves as part of a Christian church, and will contain church bells, but there are also many secular bell tow ...

of the monastery's church. After failing in his attempts to buy the nearby

, Cardinal Angelo Maria Durini purchased this property in 1785. In 1787, he converted the monastery structure into a villa for use during the summer and added a loggia, which allowed viewers to obtain two different panoramas of the lake. Villa-del-Balbianello-wedding 01

After the cardinal’s death in 1796, the villa passed to his nephew,

Luigi Porro Lambertenghi Count Luigi Renato Porro-Lambertenghi (July 12, 1780 in Como – February 9, 1860 in Milan) was an Italian nationalist, businessman, and politician. He was the son of politician and essayist Luigi Lambertenghi (1739–1813). He inherited Villa ...

. During his ownership, the villa became a center for republican activity and meetings, where Italian patriots and Carbonari met. Among Lambertenghi's guests at the villa was the writer Silvio Pellico, who tutored Lambertenghi's sons. In 1820, Pellico was arrested by the Austrian government, and Lambertenghi was forced to move to Belgium, where he was supported by the Arconati-Visconti family. Lambertenghi subsequently sold the villa to his friend, Giuseppe Arconati Visconti. Visconti made improvements to its gardens and the

loggia In architecture, a loggia ( , usually , ) is a covered exterior gallery or corridor, usually on an upper level, but sometimes on the ground level of a building. The outer wall is open to the elements, usually supported by a series of columns ...

. To this day, the balustrade in front of the church bears the Visconti emblem of a serpent with a man in its mouth. During the period of Visconti ownership, the villa hosted politicians and writers Giovanni Berchet,

Alessandro Manzoni Alessandro Francesco Tommaso Antonio Manzoni (, , ; 7 March 1785 – 22 May 1873) was an Italian poet, novelist and philosopher. He is famous for the novel '' The Betrothed'' (orig. it, I promessi sposi) (1827), generally ranked among the maste ...

Giuseppe Giusti Giuseppe Giusti (; 12 May 1809 – 31 May 1850) was an Italian poet and satirist. Biography Giusti was born at Monsummano Terme, now in the province of Pistoia. His father, a cultivated and rich man, accustomed his son from childhood to s ...

, as well as the artist

Arnold Böcklin Arnold Böcklin (16 October 182716 January 1901) was a Swiss symbolist painter. Biography He was born in Basel. His father, Christian Frederick Böcklin (b. 1802), was descended from an old family of Schaffhausen, and engaged in the silk trad ...

. The gradual decline of the family resulted in a neglect of the villa for more than 30 years. Just prior to World War I, American businessman Butler Ames saw the villa for the first time. He made an offer to purchase it from the Arconati Visconti family and was initially rejected. He kept returning with ever-larger cash offers, until in 1919 he was successful in obtaining ownership. Ames renovated the villa and its garden. In 1974, Ames's heirs sold the villa to businessman and explorer Count Guido Monzino (leader of the first Italian expedition to climb

Mount Everest Mount Everest (; Tibetan: ''Chomolungma'' ; ) is Earth's highest mountain above sea level, located in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas. The China–Nepal border runs across its summit point. Its elevation (snow ...

). While Monzino left the exterior essentially unchanged, he had the interior of the villa completely re-decorated, installing artifacts acquired on his expeditions as well as important pieces of English Georgian and French antique furniture from the 18th and 19th centuries, Beauvais tapestries, French boiseries and Oriental carpets. After the assassination of Aldo Moro in 1978 by the Red Brigade, Monzino became worried about his safety, and added a system of hidden passages, linking parts of the property. Monzino died in 1988 and left the villa along with most of the Dosso d'Avedo and an endowment to pay for maintenance, to the

Fondo Ambiente Italiano The Fondo Ambiente Italiano (FAI) is the National Trust of Italy. The organisation was established in 1975 as the Fondo Ambiente Italiano, based on the model of the National Trust of England, Wales, & Northern Ireland. It is a private non ...

(FAI), the National Trust of Italy. Its grounds now form part of the Grandi Giardini Italiani. Today, the Villa del Balbianello is the most visited among the 52 FAI properties with over 135,000 visitors in 2019. In 2016, the Fondo per l'Ambiente Italiano commenced a €413,000 project to restore and improve the villa’s jetty, install new signage, new security, emergency lighting and fire prevention systems. The villa's existing diesel fuel system will be replaced with a modern heating system, new visitors bathrooms and drainage systems, and improvements to the bookshop and ticket office space. In November 2018, Indian movie star and

Bollywood Hindi cinema, popularly known as Bollywood and formerly as Bombay cinema, refers to the film industry based in Mumbai, engaged in production of motion pictures in Hindi language. The popular term Bollywood, is a portmanteau of "Bombay" (fo ...

's famous couple Ranveer Singh and

Deepika Padukone Deepika Padukone ( or ; born 5 January 1986) is an Indian actress who works in Hindi films. She is one of the highest-paid actresses in India, and her accolades include three Filmfare Awards. She features in listings of the nation's most po ...

's wedding took place at the villa.

Film appearances

A number of

feature film A feature film or feature-length film is a narrative film (motion picture or "movie") with a running time long enough to be considered the principal or sole presentation in a commercial entertainment program. The term ''feature film'' originall ...

s have used the villa for

location In geography, location or place are used to denote a region (point, line, or area) on Earth's surface or elsewhere. The term ''location'' generally implies a higher degree of certainty than ''place'', the latter often indicating an entity with an ...

shooting, including '' A Month by the Lake'' (1995), '' His Demise'' starring Paul Zukowski (2016 disaster movie), '' Casino Royale'' (2006). The villa was also used for the lake retreat scenes in '' Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones'' (2002), with

computer-generated imagery Computer-generated imagery (CGI) is the use of computer graphics to create or contribute to images in art, printed media, video games, simulators, and visual effects in films, television programs, shorts, commercials, and videos. The image ...

used in place of the building's true exterior. File:21VillaBalbianello.jpg File:11VillaBalbianello.jpg File:Villa Balbianello 3687.jpg File:31VillaBalbianello.jpg File:Lenno Villa Balbianello 12.jpg File:13VillaBalbianello.jpg File:Lenno Villa Balbianello wnetrze 4.jpg, Villa del Balbianello File:Lenno Villa Balbianello wnetrze 3.jpg, Lenno Villa File:Villa Balbianello 3631 Planar 5.jpg, Exhibition Room File:Villa Balbianello 3622 Planar 4.jpg, Map Room

Notes

References

External links

* {{Coord, 45, 57, 54, N, 9, 12, 09, E, display=title, region:IT_type:landmark_source:dewiki 1787 establishments in the Holy Roman Empire Balbianello Province of Como Fondo Ambiente Italiano Tremezzina

History

Film appearances

Notes

References

Further reading

External links