With its medieval-style tower overlooking the lake, it looks as if it stepped out of a fairy tale: it is no surprise that in 2006 it was chosen as the villain’s residence in “Casino Royale”, the film that opened the Daniel Craig era of James Bond.
Villa La Gaeta stands on the Acquaseria promontory, a hamlet of San Siro, from which it takes its name. The site originally housed the residence of the Como-born numismatist Solone Ambrosoli (1851-1906), one of the founders of the Italian Numismatic Society; after his death, his heirs entrusted the design of the new villa to the architect brothers Gino and Adolfo Coppedè, completed in 1921. The Coppedè brothers, best known for the flowery district of Rome that bears their name, drew for La Gaeta on ideas already explored in the contemporary Castello Cova in Milan, blending medieval and Renaissance references with Art Nouveau taste: mullioned windows, sgraffito decoration, frescoes and strong colour contrasts, a colonnaded portico and a pointed-arch entrance in exposed brick, all dominated by towers that punctuate the facade facing the lake.
About twenty years after its completion, the property passed to the Gerli counts. The park, as eclectic in layout as the villa itself, hosts Mediterranean species - yew, holly, box, cherry laurel, palms and cypresses near the water, cedars and pines shading the private beach.
Not open to visitors inside as it is a private property, Villa La Gaeta remains one of the most photographed and recognisable buildings on the western shore of the Alto Lario: both for its unusual architecture, suspended between an imaginary fortress and a Liberty-style villa, and for the cinematic chapter that has made it known to an international audience as well.