Casa Museo Lodovico Pogliaghi

While working on the restoration of the chapels of Varese's Sacro Monte, the artist and collector Lodovico Pogliaghi (Milan 1857 - Varese 1950) was bewitched by the tranquillity and beauty of these places. Starting in 1885, he decided to buy several adjoining plots of land on which he began to build the villa, on which he worked daily and diligently until his death in 1950.
He conceived the house as a laboratory-museum dedicated to retreat, study and display of the fruit of his collecting passion. The building, designed by Pogliaghi himself, reflects the eclectic taste of the time and the owner's interest in all forms of art, with rooms inspired by different architectural styles and an Italian-style garden dotted with antiques and curious objects.
Lodovico Pogliaghi's collection comprising valuable archaeological finds from the Egyptian, Etruscan and Greco-Roman periods (ceramics, sarcophagi, statuary, glyptics, glass), paintings and sculptures dating from the Renaissance to the Baroque period (including valuable wooden statues from the 15th and 16th centuries a sketch by Bernini, two models by Giambologna and canvases by Procaccini, Magnasco and Morazzone), a rich collection of antique European and Asian textiles (the collection of oriental carpets is exceptional), valuable historical furniture, curiosities and bizarre objects from all over the world.
The villa also preserves sketches, plaster casts, drawings and working materials by Pogliaghi (including the original plaster of the main door of Milan Cathedral).
Owned by the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, it reopened to the public in May 2014.