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Villa Pesenti Agliardi lies on the hills of Bergamo. It is the result of several transformations, the most important due to the architect Leopold Pollack, employed by Count Pietro Pesenti, in 1798. In 1826, the villa became a property of Marianna Agliardi, the niece of Pesenti. The renovation, in neoclassical style, affected both the villa and the park and its surroundings. The villa is a C-shaped structure which features several frescoes and papiers peints decorations by D. Ghislandi and V. Bonomini, depicting hunting scenes and some personal renderings of Paris and Istanbul. There is also a monumental staircase.

The park embodies the true spirit of this noble residence, agriculture and hospitality, also made extremely prominent in the Latin mottoes on the façade and several iconic statues strategically positioned on the top of the building wings.

The landscape project by Pollack was revised in the XIX century with several additions and modifications. Some traces of it can still be seen in the drawings exhibited inside the residence.
At the beginning of the XIX century, Count Paolo Agliardi completed all the pending works, thus he had the “Casa dell”Ortolano”, “Tempietto del Silenzio” and the lemon grove built. At the end of that century, the new owner of the villa, Count Giovanni Battista Agliardi, went on working in the garden, planting new species of autochthonous essences.

PLANTS

There are the giant sequoias (Sequoiadendron giganteum), a centuries-old Lebanese cedar (Cedrus Libani), and a beautiful white hornbeam (Carpinus alba), whose shape comes from a peculiar pruning technique that Pollack wanted to apply to some three thousand hornbeams initially bought for his project.

In the park, along the paths and walkways, there are several monuments: the chapel and an obelisk are probably the most striking ones. Trees and green lawns are everywhere, thus offering the perfect landscape and eye-catching views all over the estate.

This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)