Top of the World
Among the most beautiful and majestic villas of delight in Milan, Villa Arconati-FAR is a heritage of great historical, cultural and architectural value. The Villa - which today, together with its garden, is home to the Augusto Rancilio Foundation - stands in the Parco delle Groane, in the hamlet of Castellazzo di Bollate. With its twelve hectares of garden, Villa Arconati is a real discovery, just a stone's throw from Milan. Famous also for its delightful water features, the little Italian Versailles, also known as Castellazzo, still has a timeless charm, untouched for four centuries. Formerly owned by Marquis Guido Cusani, in the seventeenth century the villa passed to Galeazzo Arconati, cousin of Cardinal Federico Borromeo, to become a veritable treasure trove of art and culture. For a long time inaccessible to the public, the Augusto Rancilio Foundation has undertaken a major recovery, study and valorisation project. The palazzo is made up of a series of architecturally harmonious elements and covers an area of 10,000 m² divided into 70 rooms with a total of 365 windows, according to a local legend. Some of the most representative and best-preserved rooms of life at the court of the Arconati family in the 18th century are to be found on the Piano Nobile (the only one not accessible to dogs). Remember to look up because some of the most fascinating paintings are the frescoes on the ceiling, with spectacular trompe-l'oeil from the 1600s. The Women's Wing is enchanting, with spectacular quadratures on the vaults, the ballroom embroidered with stucco and gilding and the mysterious alcove.
