In the villa that once belonged to the Erba family, among the halls that hosted concerts and belle époque parties, a boy grew up who would become one of the most important directors of the twentieth century: Luchino Visconti.
The site, which between the 10th century and 1784 was home to a women’s monastery dedicated to Santa Maria, passed in 1816 to the Napoleonic general Domenico Pino, who had a first residence built there known as Villa Nuova. However, it was the 1882 purchase by Anna Brivio and Luigi Erba – brother and heir of Carlo Erba, founder of the Milanese pharmaceutical house of the same name – that gave rise to the villa we know today: built at the end of the nineteenth century to a design by architects Angelo Savoldi and Giovan Battista Borsani, in a Neo-Renaissance style with interior decorations by Professor Angelo Lorenzoli and frescoes by Ernesto Fontana. The new residence, surrounded by a vast English-style park, soon became a fashionable salon that hosted lectures, concerts and figures from the political and industrial world of the time.
Inherited by Carla, daughter of Luigi Erba, who married Duke Giuseppe Visconti di Modrone in Cernobbio, the villa became the summer residence of the Visconti di Modrone family, who raised seven children there: among them Luchino, the future director of masterpieces such as “The Leopard” and “Death in Venice”. Although he never shot a scene there, Visconti always regarded Villa Erba as an inexhaustible source of inspiration for the lakeside atmospheres and interiors of his works; he returned there in his final years to complete the editing of the film “Ludwig”.
Sold in 1986 by the Visconti heirs to a public-private consortium, Villa Erba is today an exhibition and conference centre that pairs its historic halls with a modern pavilion designed by architect Mario Bellini. It hosts the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este and the Orticolario gardening show every year, while the rooms once inhabited by Visconti remain open to visitors by appointment.