Villa Carlotta Museo e Giardino Botanico

Villa Carlotta is a place of rare beauty: here, masterpieces of nature and human ingenuity coexist harmoniously in 70,000 square metres of gardens and museum facilities.
In a natural basin, between the lake and the mountains, Marquis Giorgio Clerici had a splendid mansion built in the late 1600s, imposing but sober, surrounded by an Italian-style garden, facing a breathtaking backdrop of the Dolomites Grigne and Bellagio.
With Gian Battista Sommariva, the next owner, the villa reached the height of its splendour, becoming enriched with works of art and becoming an essential destination for a visit to Lake Como. Sommariva, who acquired the property in the early 19th century, wanted part of the garden to be transformed into an extraordinary romantic park and the villa to be embellished with masterpieces by Canova, Thorvaldsen and Hayez.
The park of Villa Carlotta is famous for the amazing spring flowering of rhododendrons and azaleas in over 150 varieties. However, any time of year is suitable for a visit: ancient specimens of camellias, century-old cedars and sequoias, immense plane trees and exotic essences present themselves to visitors in a succession of settings created over the centuries by the garden architects.