Built for a cardinal who never spent a single day living in it, Palazzo Gallio looks out over the lake from atop a rocky promontory north of Gravedona, with the silhouette of a castle and the soul of a Renaissance villa.
Its story begins with Tolomeo Gallio, cardinal and papal secretary of state, who between 1579 and 1580 received from Philip II of Spain the fief of the county of the Tre Pievi - Gravedona, Sorico and Dongo. The first stone was laid between 1586 and 1587, on the site of a 12th-century medieval stronghold, traces of whose walls remain incorporated into the garden’s perimeter; the works were directed by the Gravedona master builder Giacomo Curti. The architectural design was long attributed to Pellegrino Tibaldi, the same architect who worked for Carlo Borromeo - an attribution still reported by the Comune of Gravedona ed Uniti - but according to the official Lombardia Beni Culturali record it is more likely the work of Giovanni Antonio Piotti da Vacallo, who was also active at Villa Pliniana and the basilica of Sant’Abbondio in Como. The works were completed only after 1607, the year of the cardinal’s death, so he never saw the building finished.
Passed on to his nephews, the Dukes of Alvito, the palace went through turbulent centuries: it was used as a hospital during the French and Spanish occupations and was set on fire in 1636 by Henri de Rohan during the Thirty Years’ War; in the early 19th century part of the interior was even converted into a spinning mill.
The building, square in plan with four corner towers recalling its defensive origins, opens toward the lake and the mountains with two superimposed Renaissance-style loggias, while inside a great hall runs the length of the building and the first floor holds a frescoed chapel. The garden, laid out in the Italian style in the 18th century and transformed into an English-style garden in the 19th, today hosts numerous camellias: every year, in the week before Easter, it is home to the traditional Camellia Show.
Declared a national monument, Palazzo Gallio is today the seat of the Comunità Montana Valli del Lario e del Ceresio and hosts exhibitions, concerts and the town library.