Lombardy Lake Como
Tremezzo - Villa Carlotta

Tremezzo - Villa Carlotta

Villa Carlotta - Photo © Rita Crane (photo for sale)

Villa Carlotta is a place of rare beauty, where masterpieces of nature and art live together in perfect harmony in over 70.000 square meters of gardens and museum. The beautiful villa was built at the end of XVII century by the Milanese marquis Giorgio Clerici in a natural basin between lake and mountains, facing the dolomite Grignas and the peninsula of Bellagio.

The architect created for the Clericis an important but sober building, with an Italian garden decorated with sculptures, stairs and fountains. In 1801 Gian Battista Sommariva, famous politician, businessman and patron of arts, bought the villa.

Entrance - Cherubin Fountain
Photo © Rita Crane (photo for sale)

Thanks to this owner the property in Tremezzo attained the summit of its splendor and became one of the most important halting-place of the Grand Tour. The villa became a temple of XIX century art with works of Canova, Thorvaldsen and Hayez: Palamedes, Eros and Psyche, Terpsychore,

The last kiss of Romeo and Juliet are only some of the masterpieces that enriches the extraordinary collection. Under Sommariva part of the park was transformed in a fascinating romantic garden.

Sommariva's heirs sold the villa in 1843 to Princess Marianne of Nassau, Albert’s of Prussia wife, who gave it as a present to her daughter Carlotta in occasion of her wedding with Georg II of Saxen-Meiningen. Hence the name Villa Carlotta.

Gardens in bloom - Photo © ToddSF

Very fond in botanic, Georg enriched the park, today of great historical and environmental value. The gardens of Villa Carlotta chiefly owe their reputation to the rhododendrons’ and azaleas’ spring flowering, consisting of over 150 different sorts.

But the gardens are worth to visit in every period of the year: old varieties of camellias, century old cedars and sequoias, huge planes and tropical plants, the Rock garden and the Ferns valley, the Rhododendrons wood and the Bamboos garden, the agricultural tools museum and the wonderful views on the lake built in the ages the celebrity of this place, still today consider "a place of heaven".

Lilypads at Villa Carlotta - Photo © Debbie sabadash

The garden-park of Villa Carlotta (about 8 hectares) is a very fascinating place: its favorable position, but also the harmonic coexistence of styles, the variety of species, the literary suggestions make it worthy of a visit.

Come to see the Italian garden that dates back to the XVII Century with its geometrical schema, stair and terraces, statues and fountains; come to feel the echoes of the Romantic period, still alive in the structure of the park with old trees of big size and views of great charm.

Come to live the impressive vegetal architecture of the second half of the XIX Century with the monumental azaleas and rhododendrons and the unending richness of rare plants and species!

Text in part courtesy of www.villacarlotta.it

© 1997-2010 Enrico Massetti
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