Villa Olmo
Neoclassical lakeside villa with landscaped gardens that hosted Napoleon's court and later Italy's unifiers.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Villa Olmo on Lake Como starts with the name every account reaches for: Napoleon Bonaparte, who by most tellings never actually stayed here. In 1797 Marquis Innocenzo Odescalchi offered his new lakeside villa to the young general, who declined - though his wife Josephine came anyway, and returned years later as empress. From there the guide follows a parade of later occupants through these rooms, from Austrian officials and Prince Metternich to Marshal Radetzky and eventually Giuseppe Garibaldi, amid gardens planted when the estate was still farmland.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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