Begun in the seventeenth century as the home of the Ghezzi family and renamed in 1903 in memory of Count Sebregondi’s first wife, Villa Camilla is now the seat of Domaso’s town hall.
Villa Camilla stands on the edge of the historic centre of Domaso, along the Regina state road that separates it from the lake. The first building dates from the first half of the seventeenth century, as the residence of the Ghezzi family; around the middle of the century the property was sold to Count Filippo Antonio Calderara, who enlarged the building.
In 1753, when the count died, the villa passed to his nephew and heir Bartolomeo, Marquis Calderara, husband of Vittoria Peluso, with whom he lived at Villa d’Este in Cernobbio. After Bartolomeo’s death in 1806, his widow married Domenico Pino, a general of the Napoleonic army. In 1837 the villa was sold to Francesco Lampugnani; once it had passed to his son Giuseppe, it was sold to cope with financial difficulties, between 1864 and 1866 according to the regional records, to the English couple Samuel Hill and Emma Gryllis, who kept it until 1903.
In 1903 the villa passed to Count Giuseppe Maria Sebregondi, who carried out decorative work and gave it the name Camilla in honour of his first wife, Countess Camilla Barbiano di Belgioioso. When he died in 1944, the property passed to his nephews Carlo and Giovanni, who on 19 October 1952 sold it to the Municipality of Domaso, which made it the town hall.
The building has a compact rectangular plan on two floors, with a lower wing once meant for service functions. It is preceded by a monumental eighteenth-century gate that comes from Villa Giulini in Sorico; the central portal is in serizzo stone, with a small balcony on stone brackets, and the windows have painted late-Baroque frames. The park has a formal part with flower beds on the south and east sides, many camellias, tall trees such as sequoias and larches, and an artificial grotto built in the nineteenth century. The villa houses the municipal offices; since 2004 it has been the subject of a restoration that mainly concerned the main floor.