Look closely at the facades of Villa Marinoni: graffito trees run around the chamfered corners, their crowns widening toward the top floor and climbing all the way up the sloping roof, facing the lake.
It was built around 1910 for the Belgian countess Nelly Piereard, who wanted a slender three-storey structure with an evenly balanced arrangement of windows running the full height of the building. The decorative detail of the graffito trees, repeated on every chamfered corner of the villa, is probably the most original element to look for while walking along via Pissarottino, and one of the few Art Nouveau ornaments in Brunate to engage so openly with naturalistic motifs.
The street on which it stands takes its name from a small spring, the “Pissarottino”, encountered further along the path: from here the view opens onto the first basin of Lake Como, with Villa d’Este, Villa Erba and the Monte Rosa range in the background, a view worth the stop on its own.