Museo Villa Bernasconi

About this audio guide

This guide to Museo Villa Bernasconi in Cernobbio opens with a question about the plaster frieze above its entrance, a silkworm, a cocoon and a moth carved into the facade, and why an engineer named Davide Bernasconi would turn his own house into a diagram of an insect's life cycle. It follows his weaving mill from forty looms in eighteen seventy-six through decades of growth across four provinces, and arrives at the villa itself, commissioned for his son Leopoldo's wedding in nineteen oh five to put the family fortune on display. You'll hear how every mulberry leaf and butterfly worked into the ironwork and tiles repeats the same motif. Look closely at the ironwork before you step inside.