Tesori nella campagna

original shape which we can also admire in the frescoed lunettes of the grand staircase, where the Villa looks almost the same as today.

The building has rectangular plan and consists of three floors, in addition to the vast underground rooms contained inside the terracing on which the Villa stands. There are also four side buildings, which communicated with the vault: two at the front corners and two at the rear. They contain a study, the aviary of the winter garden with the harness room, a lounge for guests, the library and the peculiar Bagno del Cardinale (Cardinal's Bathroom), circular, decorated with niches and with a marble bath at its centre.

On the first and the second floor there are the wide state rooms which are six to eight metres high. On the first floor, in the Salone Centrale, the allegorical figures of Arts and Virtues alternate with landscapes of family property, with festoons, grotesques and mythological figures all around. The frescoes here are attributed to the Florentine painter Salvio Savini who made them in 1581, one year after his work in CittĂ della Pieve. “Favouriteâ€? painter at the Della Corgna court, Savini was a Mannerist.

Still in the Salone Centrale, or Salone d'Onore, there is a wooden carved coffered ceiling, beautiful and unusual for a private house. It was probably designed by Galeazzo Alessi who had made a similar one in Saint Peter's church in Perugia.

In 1643 the Villa was bought by the Oddi family and the sixteenth century building was tranformed after a neoclassical style.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century the garden was renovated and an English romantic garden was created.

In 1893 the Villa was bought by Cavaliere Cesaroni, a rich entrepreneur. He made the Villa his business centre, modernized its plants and grew many species of trees in the garden for profitable business. He also ordered a photographic documentation to be made, which is very precious today.

In the 1920s Ligurian lawyer Luigi Parodi bought the Villa and as a patron of the arts, used to have as his guests men of letters and artists, like Giuseppe Ungaretti, Vincenzo Cardarelli, Mino Maccari.

The Villa was then inherited by the Monaco di Lapio family. Anna Parodi Monaco di Lapio threw open it to the most important and learned people of the time.

In 1996 the Villa was bought by the State. Its naturalistic complex has great importance both for its historical and artistic value and for the wide variety of botanical species, recently studied by the Agriculture Faculty of University of Perugia.

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