Palazzo Estense e Giardini all'Italiana

Giacomo Leopardi called Palazzo Estense a "little Versailles". Built in the late eighteenth century for Francesco III d'Este, the palace and its Italian gardens remain the symbolic centre of Varese and, still today, the seat of its municipal government.

Why it matters

Palazzo Estense is where Varese's history as a city of courts, gardens and villas becomes visible in one place. When Maria Theresa of Austria granted Varese in feudal tenure to Francesco III d'Este in 1765 — the duke had been a guest in the city a decade earlier and had wanted it as his fief — he needed a residence worthy of a court. The result, erected between 1766 and 1771 by the architect Giuseppe Antonio Bianchi, and his gardens too, transformed a pre-existing villa into one of the most stately ensembles in Lombardy. Now housing the municipality and the civic library, it remains a ducal palace in civic use.

What to notice

The Italian garden is arranged on a long axis with geometric parterres, tree-lined avenues, flowerbeds and the great circular basin that animates the composition, which the regional tourism portal counts among the finest eighteenth-century gardens in Lombardy and which continues towards the gardens of Villa Mirabello. A belvedere at the upper end frames a view back over the garden and city, following the perspective typical of Italian garden design.

The Salone d'onore, the palace's ceremonial hall, is distinguished by stucco decoration. Its rooms have also hosted public initiatives and events. The garden has also served as the setting for the summer "Suoni e luci" spectacle.

Context and history

The palace rose where the villa of Tommaso Orrigoni stood: Bianchi's project restored and partly demolished the existing structure, reshaping the spaces to receive the court and the authorities and to stage rich festivities. The regional heritage catalogue dates the construction to 1766–1771 and credits Bianchi with both the building and the design of the garden's layout. The Este parenthesis fixed Varese's identity for the century that followed — a ducal seat whose gardens, villas and later liberty hotels earned it the name of garden city — and after the ducal period the palace passed to public use.

Since the late nineteenth century it has housed the municipal administration; today the complex also contains the civic library, and several rooms serve for conferences and concerts. Leopardi's "piccola Versailles", coined during his Italian travels, survives as the shorthand by which the palace is still introduced.