Varenna

Villa Monastero

Varenna's former Cistercian convent, now a house museum, with a botanical garden running for almost two kilometres along the shore.

Today
Visit duration: 1 h – 2 h
Booking: Not required
Area: Centro Lago

Nemo bis · CC BY-SA 3.0

Mauro Cassina · CC BY-SA 3.0
Nemo bis · CC BY-SA 3.0

Why go

Villa Monastero, at Varenna, began in the twelfth century as a convent of nuns.

The convent was suppressed in the sixteenth century and became a private residence.

Between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it was turned into the eclectic house open today; a cloister survives from the convent. The house museum keeps fourteen rooms with their original furnishings from those years. The botanical garden follows the shore for almost two kilometres, with Mediterranean and subtropical plants, agaves, cedars of Lebanon and a little temple over the water. In 1954 Enrico Fermi gave his last course of lectures here, and the conference hall bears his name.

The garden holds Giovan Battista Comolli's marble group La Clemenza di Tito, of 1830, his last work.
The palms in the garden include rare species such as Jubaea spectabilis and Erythea armata.
The house museum displays the physicist Giovanni Polvani's collection of scientific instruments for optics, electronics and mechanics.

Highlights

The little temple over the water
The agaves and cedars of Lebanon
The Fermi hall
The cloister of the old convent

Getting there

On foot from the Varenna pier along the lakeside walk, about 15 minutes.
From Varenna-Esino-Perledo station, 15 minutes downhill.

The terrace on the water from above: the two twisted columns, the fountain, a statue on the balustrade and, beyond, the lake and the far shore.

Accessibility

Some parts of the botanical garden are not accessible to disabled visitors: at the entrance an avenue runs downhill and has to be climbed again on the way back, the second part has steps, and near the house museum and the café the ground is gravel.
For visitors with reduced mobility there is an electric shuttle, which also carries wheelchairs, over the first stretch of the garden, from the ticket office to the house museum and the café and back. Ask at the ticket office on arrival, or beforehand by email.
The house museum has lifts; adapted toilets are next to the multimedia room below the ticket office, in the outdoor area beyond the café and on the ground floor of the house museum.