Villa del Grumello park

In the second half of the sixteenth century the Milanese banker Tommaso d'Adda rebuilt it as one of the first suburban villas of Como's patricians on the lake. It then passed to the Odescalchi, to the Giovio and, from the nineteenth century, to the Celesia. At the end of the eighteenth century Simone Cantoni reworked its facade and added the two wings. Vincenzo Monti came here, and Alessandro Volta, and above all Ugo Foscolo, guest of the Giovio; a bust of him stands in the garden. The four-hectare romantic park has paths on several levels, a great cedar, sequoias, a ginkgo, the water-lily pond and a collection of rare hydrangeas. The park lies at the centre of the Chilometro della Conoscenza, the walk that links it to Villa Olmo and Villa Sucota.