Villa Giulia: Description

The other side of the villa opens onto another Italian garden with geometric flowerbeds and boxwoods. The rest of the garden is characterized by exotic plants and lawns. What was the old orchard, next to the stables, has over time become an olive grove.

Historical Information

Built in the late eighteenth century by Count Pietro Venini in place on which stood the summer house of the family Camozzi, was finally completed in 1806 and dedicated to the wife of this, Giulia. Important changes landscape had also included the leveling of some areas surrounding the building. A large financial commitment and several years of work handed to Peter Venini a villa extraordinary, from double-sided, one for each branch of the lake, and spectacular entrance that starting from the steps of the village of Loppia slowly ascended to the villa. "This beautiful stretch of plain that the branch of Lecco and Lake Como or joins, other times the site was overgrown, disavvenevole, solitary, where appuntavansi crags and ravines, you adimavan valleys, ravines spaccavan. Don Pietro Venini, native of here, having collected enormous wealth, he wanted with noble divisamento this villa built, waves que 'same places that they had seen his modest background they were partakers of his cangiata pure luck "is how Balbiani synthesized in 1877 as it did for the edification of the villa.

By Venini the villa passed briefly to Leopold I, King of Belgium, true lover of the lake, which, however, did not attend assiduously the property, because of the many political commitments. In 1865, the death of the sovereign, the villa was sold again for a few years and became a luxury hotel. At that time he was visited by a wealthy banker Polish Baron Gay, who looking for a place where he could reside mild wife, sick with tuberculosis long time, he decided to buy it. After the death of his wife, overwhelmed by grief and perhaps also by political and economic events, Gay sold the villa to the Romanian nobleman Henry Kirakirschen which then came to the current property. Not open to the public.

At the end of the XVIII century the Count Pietro Venini made build a new sumptuous residence, called Villa Giulia, in his wife's honour. When the villa was erected, Venini bought wide lands, so his property extended from Regatola as far as Loppia. The view of the two lakes, that nowadays you can enjoy from the villa, can appear obvious and natural; it was instead obtained trought artifices that in those times had to appear almost impossible. In front of the façade of the villa some paths and flowerbeds were built: they had a symmetrical design with in the middle a bath in which the noble façade was mirrored;
Far from the villa there is a wide flight of steps, surrounded by roof gardens full of fruit trees, which take to a small harbour and to a garden full of forest trees; it was a wonderful example of Italian garden that then, during the XIX century was enriched by his successors with statues, fountains, exotic trees and precious essences.