Villa d'Este

This guide to Villa d'Este on Lake Como centers on a problem facing Vittoria Peluso in 1806: how to keep her husband, one of Napoleon's Italian generals, content with no war left to fight. Peluso had trained as a prima ballerina at Milan's La Scala before inheriting the estate from her first husband and marrying Count Domenico Pino. Worried he would waste away missing combat, she had mock fortresses built across the grounds, complete with battlements and towers, so he could stage sieges whenever the mood struck. You will also hear how, a few years later, Caroline of Brunswick raised her own very different stage on the same slope.