It was here that Carlo Emilio Gadda, one of the greatest Italian writers of the twentieth century, spent much of his childhood and adolescence, though he never kept a fond memory of it.
Also known as Villa Gadda, Villa Ambra stands on via alla Costa, at the crossing with via Monticelli and via dei Giardini, in a raised position above the Costa field towards Galliano. It was the holiday residence of the family of the author of masterpieces such as “La cognizione del dolore” (Acquainted with Grief) and “Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana” (That Awful Mess on Via Merulana): in the first of these novels, set in an imaginary Brazil but inspired by the places of the writer’s childhood, the nearby Lake Segrino appears under the poetic name “See grün”, German for “green lake” - a none-too-veiled tribute to the small body of water that Stendhal, centuries earlier, had compared to an emerald gem.
The bond between the Gadda family and Longone al Segrino does not end with the villa: in the local cemetery still rest the writer’s sister, brother, father and mother, evidence of a relationship with these places deeper than Gadda himself was ever willing to admit. Lake Segrino, for that matter, also inspired other great names of Italian literature: it is the setting of Antonio Fogazzaro’s novel “Malombra” and Ippolito Nievo’s novella “La pazza del Segrino”.
Today the Villa Ambra building has been converted into residential apartments, but it remains an essential point of reference for anyone who loves retracing the places of twentieth-century Italian literature along the shores of this small Brianza lake.