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This villa is in Oria, a little hamlet in Valsolsa (Como), overlooking the Italian shore of Lake Lugano. It used to be the abode of Italian novelist Antonio Fogazzaro from Vicenza (1842-1911), as well as the actual setting for most of his works, including “The Patriot” (“Piccolo Mondo Antico”, 1986).

In 1960, Fogazzaro’s grandnephew Giuseppe Roi inherited the villa and decided to restore and refurbish it with a lot of items belonging to the Fogazzaros. In 2009, Marquis Roi asked the National Trust for Italy (FAI) to take care of this mansion.

Elegant and refined – built on a former structure of the 1500s, the villa has a typical XIX century look and preserves Fogazzaro’s true legacy in the library, the lounge, the dining room, and the frescoed gallery. Outside the villa, there’s an evocative garden, built on three terraces, one of which hanging, decorated with hedges, flowering shrubs, trees, and a pergola. This very place was thoroughly described in “The Patriot”:

“An olea fragrans in one corner spoke of the power of gentle things over the hot, impetuous spirit of the poet; a tiny cypress, not over-acceptable to Luisa, spoke in another corner of his religiosity; a low, brick parapet, in open-work pattern, ran between the cypress and the olea, supporting two parallel rows of tufa-stones, between which blossomed a smiling colony of verbenas, petunias, and wall-flowers, and spoke of the singular ingenuity of its author; the many rose-bushes scattered everywhere spoke of his love of classic beauty; the ficus repens which decked the walls towards the lake, the twin orange-trees between the two tiers, and a vigorous carob-tree, revealed a chilly temperament, a fancy turning always towards the south, insensible to the fascination of the north.”

In 1941, in the garden and the lounge scenes of the film “The Patriot”, directed by Mario Soldati, were shot.

This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)