Villa Erba

Villa Erba pairs a late nineteenth-century lakeside residence with one of Italy's busiest exhibition estates. Built for the Erba family and tied by marriage to the Visconti di Modrone, the villa and its English-style park now host fairs, concerts, concours and festivals, alongside modern congress halls designed by Mario Bellini.

Why it matters

Cernobbio's lakefront fame rests partly on this estate: a neoclassical-style residence of the 1890s whose park runs flat to the water in one of the largest open green spaces on the lake's western shore. Since the 1980s the villa has belonged to a public-private company that runs it as an international exhibition and congress centre, so its historic halls — and the park around them — are repeatedly returned to public use through fairs, festivals and cultural events. Villa Erba reflects Como's industrial aristocracy and remains an event venue whose historic buildings and park have returned to public use.

What to notice

The estate is organised in four parts, the antique villa itself, reserved for prestige events; the secular park of roughly 100,000 square metres, an English-style garden facing the lake; Le Serre, the congress complex by architect Mario Bellini whose glass-and-greenery design nods to the site's tradition; and the Galoppatoio, the green platform used for event installations. The historic rooms retain period decoration and reception spaces built to entertain the pharmaceutical dynasty of the Erba family. The quarter's name itself, Largo Luchino Visconti, commemorates the film director who spent childhood summers here; his connection makes the villa a touchstone for cinema visitors as well as design and garden lovers.

Context and history

The residence was built between 1894 and 1898 to designs by the architects Angelo Savoldi and Giovan Battista Borsani for Luigi Erba, heir to the great pharmaceutical firm of Carlo Erba; decorations were entrusted to Angelo Lorenzoli with frescoes by Ernesto Fontana. The site's history is older: a monastery of Santa Maria is documented in the area from the tenth century, suppressed in the eighteenth, and in 1816 the Napoleonic general Domenico Pino created the park. The Erba and Visconti families joined when Carla Erba married Duke Giuseppe Visconti di Modrone; their son Luchino, the director, later edited his film Ludwig here. In 1986 a consortium acquired the estate and created the exhibition complex with Bellini's pavilions, beginning the villa's modern public life. Since then its halls and park have welcomed concours, textile fairs, comic-art and music festivals and film productions.