Villa Carlotta

This guide to Villa Carlotta on Lake Como opens with Sommariva unpacking crates of marble on the shore in 1801, fresh from a career as the ousted strongman of Napoleon's Cisalpine Republic. It follows how the deposed politician turned his fortune to sculpture, commissioning and courting Antonio Canova and Bertel Thorvaldsen the way he once courted political allies. You'll hear about Canova's Palamedes, a Greek hero destroyed by a false accusation of treason, and Thorvaldsen's reliefs alongside portraits by Jacques-Louis David. Take a slow walk through the rooms Sommariva built to house them.