Wonder and Pleasure between Milan and Varese

Between the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, noble families sought peace and also beauty in the countryside, away from the cities.

This led to the creation of pleasure villas, historic homes surrounded by green, and designed to surprise and entertain their guests. The provinces of Milan and Varese are home to precious testimonies of this period, where every visit is a stroll through art, nature, and scenographic architecture. The early summer is the best time to visit: the gardens are flourishing and the water jets are back along the pathways.

From the water features at Villa Litta to the eastern-style fountains of Villa Toeplitz, the theatres and maze at Villa Arconati, and the artistic greenhouse at Villa Panzam, this outdoor itinerary offers unexpected views, hidden details and the pleasure of being amazed.

Villa Visconti Borromeo Litta (MI) — With its mosaics, statues, frescoes, fountains and water features, Villa Litta is the perfect example of the “pleasure villas” so popular in Lombardy between the 16th and 17th century, when it was built on the order of Count Pirro I Visconti Borromeo and designed by some of the best architects of the time. The result is breathtaking. The villa’s best-known feature is probably the Nymphaeum, which is one of the best examples of this type of architecture in the area, thanks to the grand embellishments and the effect of the water features, still working today, powered by the sophisticated plumbing designed by some of the era’s best fountain makers.
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Villa e Parco Toeplitz — Villa Toeplitz is a beautiful villa of eclectic architecture located in the Varese district of Sant’Ambrogio, at the foot of the Italy’s Sacro Monte hill, with a series of chapels leading up to the brow of a hill to echo Calvary. The villa owes its name to banker Giuseppe Toeplitz, originally from Poland, who bought it in 1914, renovated and expanded it, making the gardens particularly impressive through the addition of water features, including a magnificent flight of steps in porphyry stone decorated with fountains and waterfalls. .
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Villa Arconati (MI) — This villa’s incredible artistic, architectural and historic value is now getting a new lease on life thanks to a project aimed at turning the villa into a centre where people can enjoy and create art in the city of Milan. Located in the Parco delle Groane and widely considered the Italian Versailles, the villa had been abandoned for decades and its furnishings sold at auction in the 1980s before it became the headquarters of the Augusto Rancilio Foundation. The vast estate includes the villa, the village, the woods, the farmland and church of San Guglielmo.
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Villa Della Porta Bozzolo (VA) — Villa Bozzolo, with its Rococo trompe-l’oeil, frescoed vaulted ceilings and walls and Baroque decor, is one of Lombardy’s best-known “pleasure villas”, extravagant country residences built for their owners’ entertainment and refreshment. The villa is built in the U shape typical of the time with an exquisite ceremonial central courtyard.
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Villa Menafoglio Litta Panza (VA) — Built in the 18th century as the Marquis of Menafoglio’s “palace of delights”, the place where he held his parties and events, after changing owners a few times, the villa was bought in the 1950s by Count Giuseppe Panza di Biumo, a man with a passion for contemporary art. From this point onwards Giuseppe Panza turned the villa into a veritable artistic hub, with renowned painters and sculptors coming and going, leaving their mark on the villa’s decor with masterpieces of environmental and conceptual art.
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