Villa Fogazzaro Roi - LakeComo International Music Festival

Situata sulla riva italiana del Lago di Lugano, nel Comune di Oria Valsolda, Villa Fogazzaro Roi è oggi lo scrigno più prezioso delle memorie fogazzariane. Lo scrittore Antonio Fogazzaro elesse infatti la Villa a proprio “luogo dell’anima”, ambientandovi gran parte dei suoi maggiori successi letterari.

Dimora privilegiata per le villeggiature estive del letterato, la casa divenne luogo del suo divertimento e del suo riposo.
Le stanze della Villa, intime e raccolte, sono colme di fotografie di famiglia e di cimeli, testimonianze dello stile di vita di una famiglia borghese sul finire dell’Ottocento: il vero e proprio Piccolo mondo anticodi Fogazzaro, immerso nei paesaggi mozzafiato del Ceresio, tra lago e montagna.

Nel 1960 il marchese Giuseppe Roi, detto Boso, pronipote di Fogazzaro, ricevette in eredità dallo zio paterno Antonio la Villa di Oria Valsolda, divenendo unico custode delle memorie ivi conservate.

Nel 2009, il marchese affidò la Villa di Oria alle cure del FAI, perché potesse aprirla al pubblico.

La Villa, tutt’ora in fase di restauro è aperta per le visite solo in occasioni speciali, come questo concerto del LakeComo Festival.

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The Little World of the Past
Looking out across the Italian shore of Lake Lugano, Villa Fogazzaro Roi is the inspiring, peaceful place in which Antonio Fogazzaro spent long periods of his life. The villa is still highly evocative of the descriptions given in Fogazzaro’s novel, The Little World of the Past. It is in these rooms, amid the mountainsides of the Valsolda, that the characters live their lives: from the little terrace transformed by the main character Franco Maironi into the “lyrical poetry of the home”, to the small garden with its sweet osmanthus, which “encapsulated in a corner the power of gentle things on the warm, impetuous spirit of the poet”; and from the narrow gallery that “they called a loggia, perhaps because that’s what it had once been”, to the harbour, where little Ombretta tragically dies. In the 19th-century, the villa was owned by the Barrera family, of which Teresa, the author’s mother, was a member. The villa was constructed over an existing building dating from the 16th century, and to this day it retains the original garden.

Restoration works
The residence displays numerous typically 19th-century touches, both in its overall style and in the rather reduced proportions of the rooms. The small scale of the rooms is probably due also to the position of the building, which is sited near the slope that leads down towards the lake. Still very much in place – although now comprehensively restored – are the decorated fresco motifs of the Loggia and the Drawing Room, which feature medallions and organic spirals that can be dated to the early 19th century. Works carried out in the 1950s and ’60s by the last owner Giuseppe Roi (Fogazzaro’s great grandson) saw the first and second floors being altered to house new bathrooms and bedrooms, in order to allow numerous guests to be accommodated.
The internal arrangement of the Villa as it stands today is also the result of the refined and painstaking work of Roi, who expanded the original set of pieces (such as those on show in Fogazzaro’s bedroom and study) with the addition of furniture and objets d’art from other homes inhabited by the author and his family, while also completing the existing collections with new pieces bought on the open market.

The traces of Fogazzaro
Thanks to the commitment of Giuseppe Roi, everything left behind by the author has been safeguarded and put in the best possible light, from his personal pieces (including, for example, his cufflinks) to the manuscript of Miranda and the terrace table at which he was photographed with his son Mariano, who died of typhus at a young age. It is to his son that Fogazzaro dedicated the engraving in the drawer of the writing desk in his study: “Mariano, Mariano, my Mariano! All vanity and passion aside, I gather my heart in God and in you”.

The Villa is still in restoration and it’s rarely open on request or for special occasion, as this one for the LakeComo Festival’s concert.