Villa Reale di Marlia

This guide to Villa Reale di Marlia near Lucca opens with Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi arriving at her newly bought estate in 1806, and the twin palaces she built to flank her own driveway before a guest even reached the front door. You'll hear how she modeled the grounds on her brother's Malmaison outside Paris, and how the estate passed afterward to the Pecci-Blunt counts and, decades later, onto the market among dozens of historic Lucca villas. The guide follows what a Swiss couple did with the place once they took it on.