VILLA CARLOTTA

Built in the late-seventeenth century, Villa Carlotta

The enormous wealth accumulated by Sommariva during his dazzling political career enabled him to enjoy an opulent life style and to cultivate his immense passion for the arts, especially sculpture, which led to his purchase of works by Antonio Canova and Berthel Thorvaldsen.

The gardens with English roses, citrus fruit tunnels, camellias, hydrangeas along with azaleas and rhododendrons, century old cedars and sequoias,

In the early 1800s, Giovanni Battista Sommariva bought a series of masterpieces by the greatest artists of his era, including Antonio Canova and Bertel Thorvaldsen and those works are the most important part of the current exhibition layout.

Of the collection’s objets d’art remain still in the Tremezzo villa, there is the stunning 1823 canvas by Francesco Hayez, The Kiss, depicting Romeo and Juliet.

On the second floor, the private apartments, furniture and objects of Princess Charlotte, who was given the villa in the mid-nineteenth century as a wedding present when she married George II, Grand Duke of Sachsen-Meiningen.