View from the gardens of Villa Balbiano across Lake Como
Text © Rubens Modigliani. Images © Bruno Ehrs from Villa Balbiano: Italian Opulence on Lake Como, Flammarion 2018.
Villa Balbiano has been reborn. Its rooms have regained their stately magnificence and its decorations harmonize beautifully with its timeless setting – luxuriant vegetation and the limpid expanse of water encircled by mountains.
An ideal itinerary for discovering the villa begins on the ground floor – the original and oldest part of the villa – in the rooms and halls painted with mural paintings by renowned 18th-century Italian artists such as Giovan Antonio Torricelli and his school. The Sala delle Colonne, the heart of the villa, features splendid late 17th-century frescoes by Giovan Paolo and Raffaele Recchi, and four late 18th-century frescoed busts by Francesco and Gaetano Cartosio.