Giardini di Villa Cipressi

Villa Cipressi's botanical garden layers agaves, cypresses and Mediterranean planting across terraces descending toward Lake Como. Its complex developed over four centuries and was bought by the people of Varenna in 1980.

Why it matters

Villa Cipressi combines horticultural and civic histories. Its mild microclimate supports American agave, strawberry tree, myrtle, tamarisk and rare cypress specimens. Varenna residents purchased the complex through a public subscription in 1980 and dedicated it to public use. Built up between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, the estate brings architecture, botany and local history together on terraces above the lake.

What to notice

The staircases and terraces form a deliberate architectural composition descending toward the lake. Planting includes American agave, some specimens reportedly dating to the mid-nineteenth century, alongside araucaria, persimmon and Monterey cypress. Mediterranean shrubs such as strawberry tree, myrtle and tamarisk grow nearer the water, while a wisteria-covered pergola and the cypresses that give the villa its name shape the garden's relationship with the shoreline.

Context and history

The complex was built up over four centuries: records trace the estate to the Serponti family, and the buildings accumulated between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries under successive owners. In the early nineteenth century it passed to Baron Isimbardi, a director of the Milan mint who installed a mint laboratory on the property, and later to the Andreossi family, to an English owner named Astley among others, and finally to the Accame family. The turning point came in 1980, when the people of Varenna purchased the complex through a public voluntary subscription to dedicate it to public use; the Comune di Varenna has owned it since. The historic botanical garden remains a defining part of the Varenna landscape.