At the point where the Statale Regina crosses Cadenabbia, ringed by battlemented walls and turrets, stands what local guides still call Villa Ronconi or Castello Ronconi: the name recalls an old fortification on which, between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the industrialist Pompeo Maresi had built the villa that today more properly bears his own name, Villa Maresi.
The project, carried out between 1895 and 1905 by the engineer Giacomo Mantegazza with the collaboration of his son Carlo, was its author’s last work: Mantegazza was sent to England at Maresi’s own expense to study English neo-Gothic taste firsthand, later translated into the towers, battlements and varied window orders of the building. The villa, catalogued in the census of Lombardy’s architectural heritage with several separate entries for the main building and its outbuildings, takes up and reinterprets the forms of what sources describe as the pre-existing “Castello di Ronconi”, a fortification whose origins remain uncertain: the accounts consulted do not agree on the exact period (between the 16th and 17th centuries, depending on the source) nor do they offer more precise documentation of its earlier history.
A separate local tradition, handed down in the chronicles of Griante and linked more generally to the castles that dotted these hills in the 16th century, tells of Giovanni del Matto, a soldier of fortune turned pirate of the Lario, who in 1521, after a defeat at Borgovico, took refuge in one of the area’s castles before being besieged and beheaded along with his brother. The available sources do not, however, allow one to say with certainty whether this castle coincides with the site where Villa Ronconi stands today, or with one of the other fortifications once present on the heights of Griante. A private property not open inside, the villa remains one of the most recognisable architectural landmarks along the Statale Regina between Cadenabbia and Griante.