We The Italians | Italian gardens: Villa Cicogna Mozzoni

Italian gardens: Villa Cicogna Mozzoni

Italian gardens: Villa Cicogna Mozzoni

  • WTI Magazine #90 Apr 14, 2017
  • 4451

Villa Cicogna Mozzoni was built in 1463 as a hunting lodge of the Mozzoni family, and renovated and expanded in the third decade of the sixteenth century commissioned by the brothers Francesco and Maino Mozzoni. In the 1580s Ascanio Mozzoni tried to revive, in the settlement of the land around the villa, the many ideas learned during numerous trips to Rome and Florence.

The park, in Renaissance style, is divided into seven levels, and it is in perfect harmony with the lines of the villa. A particular attention has been given to the fusion of the surrounding nature with the interior, characterized by a decoration with important frescoes, which overlook the Italian garden.

This area, surrounded by a tall hedge of laurel (Laurus nobilis), which acts as a backdrop to the house, presents the flowerbeds center walls boxwood (Buxus sempervirens), furnished with two cup-shaped fountains.

The Italianate style is present in all four terraced gardens, with ponds, water games, fountains and caves surrounding the villa. Geometric boxwood hedges, olea fragrans (Osmanthus fragrans) and laurel (Laurus nobilis) frame the blooms of the flowerbeds composed of dahlias, begonias (Begonia semperflorens) and glass flower (Impatiens spp).

On the hill behind the house there is a romantic park, English-style, rich in native and not native species, as beech (Fagus sylvatica), chestnut Castanea sativa), ash (Fraxinus excelsior), spruce (Picea excelsa), white spruce ( abies alba), scots pine (Pinus sylvestris, yew (Taxus baccata), holm oak (Quercus ilex), handkerchiefs tree (Davidia involucrate).

The garden has undergone numerous interventions with the succession of Mozzoni generations, when the family in the late sixteenth century married into the Cicogna family.

The villa is still inhabited today by the heirs, who run it together with the nearby farm.