At San Giovanni, a small hamlet of Bellagio, a Moorish-style facade holds the story of a descendant who returned from a journey to the East with the idea of turning his own villa into a corner of Africa on Lake Como.
It all began in the seventeenth century, when a simple country house stood where the present building now stands. It was marquis Ludovico Trotti who, in 1752, transformed it into a sumptuous villa surrounded by an Italian-style garden. A century later, one of his descendants, returning from a journey to the East and North Africa, decided to rework its facade in Moorish style and to create, in the park, a tropical water garden filled with ornamental plants brought from Japan, China and Korea: an unusual choice that still makes Villa Trotti Bentivoglio unique among the residences of the Lario.
Nothing remains today of that exotic garden - a casualty of the neglect that followed the marquis’s death and of a flood of the Perlo stream - but the park still holds gravel paths, a small pebble beach sheltered by a distinctive pier, and a semicircular stone staircase leading down to the lake. On certain occasions, such as during the Bellagio Blu&Green event, the garden opens its gates to the public with free guided tours, a rare chance to discover up close one of the most curious and least-known corners of Bellagio.