Villa Erba

Luigi Erba and his wife Anna Brivio, who became its owners at the end of the nineteenth century, had a new villa built on the lake to a design by the architects Angelo Savoldi and Giovan Battista Borsani. The building has a square plan, broad flights of steps down to the lake, an entrance portico and a lookout turret; the rooms on its two floors were decorated by Angelo Lorenzoli with coloured friezes, stucco, gilding and ceramic floors. The villa then passed to their daughter Carla, wife of Duke Giuseppe Visconti di Modrone, and their son Luchino, the film director, spent part of his childhood here. In 1986 the heirs sold it to become an exhibition and conference centre: the Le Serre pavilion was designed by Mario Bellini.