Tremezzina

Villa Carlotta

A late seventeenth-century villa with a museum of neoclassical sculpture and eight hectares of garden on baroque terraces, among camellias and rhododendrons.

Book on the official site

Today
Visit duration: 1 h 30 – 3 h
Booking: Recommended
Area: Centro Lago

Daderot · Public domain

Maurizio Moro5153 · CC BY-SA 4.0
Maurizio Moro5153 · CC BY-SA 4.0
Maurizio Moro5153 · CC BY-SA 4.0

Why go

Villa Carlotta was built in the late seventeenth century by Milan's Clerici marquesses, with a formal Italian garden on terraces towards the lake.

In 1801 it was bought by Giovanni Battista Sommariva, who filled it with works by Antonio Canova, Bertel Thorvaldsen and Francesco Hayez. In 1843 his heirs sold it to Princess Marianne of Orange-Nassau, daughter of the King of the Netherlands, who in 1850 gave it to her daughter Charlotte on her marriage to George II of Saxe-Meiningen: the villa is named after her. Confiscated by the Italian State during the First World War, it has been in the care of the Ente Villa Carlotta since 1927. The museum is on two floors. On the ground floor are Thorvaldsen's frieze of Alexander the Great, Canova's Palamedes, Adamo Tadolini's Cupid and Psyche and The Last Kiss of Romeo and Juliet, painted by Hayez in 1823; upstairs are the princess's rooms.

Between mid-April and mid-May the park's azaleas and rhododendrons are in flower.
It holds Adamo Tadolini's Cupid and Psyche, an authorised version of Canova's original, and a monumental Thorvaldsen frieze.
The house museum and the botanical park are visited together.

Highlights

The camellia garden
The double-ramped stair down to the lake
The plaster-cast gallery
The rock garden and bamboo grove

Getting there

By boat to the Tremezzo pier, about 450 metres from the entrance under the porticoes; by car ferry to Cadenabbia, about 900 metres along the lake.
C110 bus from Como or Menaggio, Villa Carlotta stop.
By car, paid parking along the main road.

The Italian garden seen from the villa: the terraces, the fountain, the gate on the lake and visitors on the paths, at the end of September.

Accessibility

Most of the park is accessible to people with a motor disability, although several paths climb: two lifts in the garden and gravel-stabilising grids on the paths help those who find walking hard.
The museum, on two floors, has a lift and can be toured in a wheelchair or with a pushchair; mobility scooters and powered wheelchairs are welcome too.
There are adapted toilets along the visitor route and at the café.

Visiting

Opening

What else is open now

In 2026, 20 March to 18 October every day 10:00 to 19:00, 19 October to 8 November 10:00 to 18:00; then the weekends of 14–15, 21–22 and 28–29 November and 5 to 8 December, 10:00 to 16:00

Until 8 November 2026, the last ticket is sold an hour before closing and the museum closes half an hour before the garden. On the special opening dates in November and December, the last ticket is sold at 15:30. On other days the villa can be visited only by booking through its office.

Tickets

Paid admission, reduced over 65, for students from 6 to 25 and for anyone arriving the same day with an ASF or Trenord ticket, family ticket.

Read on

Free up to 5, for disabled visitors and one companion and for residents of Tremezzina and Griante

Paid admission, reduced over 65, for students from 6 to 25 and for anyone arriving the same day with an ASF or Trenord ticket, family ticket; free up to 5, for disabled visitors and one companion and for residents of Tremezzina and Griante

The next boats from Tremezzo

Directions On the map Ente Villa Carlotta

DestinationsTremezzinaFour villages in a row on the lake's western shore, facing Bellagio.