Suspended on a green headland between the two branches of Lake Como, Villa Giulia offers one of the rarest views on the Lario: a double panorama that takes in the Como branch and the Lecco branch of the lake at the same time.
The villa was built at the end of the eighteenth century for count Pietro Venini, on the site of the former summer residence of the Camozzi family, and was completed in 1806. Venini dedicated it to his wife Giulia, from whom it takes its name, while the two side wings that complete its facade today were added only in 1882. Before that, the property was also known as Villa Zina, and it still includes the old Villa Ciceri, a sixteenth-century building preserved within the olive grove of the park.
Its history is marked by illustrious changes of ownership: it belonged for a time to Leopold I of Belgium, and after his death, around 1865, it was turned for a few years into a luxury hotel named “Chateau du Roi des Belges”, through the initiative of the Bellagio entrepreneur Antonio Mella. Among its most valuable rooms stands out the so-called “Salone d’Enea”, a ballroom frescoed across two floors and roughly 15 metres high, a work attributed to the Galli da Bibbiena family.
With its park of over twenty hectares, among the largest on the Lario, Villa Giulia is reached by climbing the historic “scalotta”, a flight of eight hundred steps from the boat landings of Loppia: a small effort rewarded with one of the most photographed and best-loved views among visitors to Bellagio, well worth tackling at least once.