Villa Beccaria, Sala Comacina

Begun in the mid-eighteenth century and completed in the early nineteenth, it has three floors and a large semicircular terrace over the lake. Giulio Beccaria, son of Cesare and uncle of Alessandro Manzoni, lived here. Under Cesare Cantù and his daughter Rachele it became home to the literary salon called the “Accademia dei pedanti”, whose visitors included Antonio Fogazzaro. It later passed to the De Marchi family; Emilio wrote “Col fuoco non si scherza” here, set largely in the villa and park. The park contains the Beccaria couple's funerary temple, with six columns, a dome and a young woman praying, sculpted by Bassano Danielli. The property includes a seventeenth-century boathouse.