Villa Massari
A beautiful and cozy country villa of Milanese nobility
Where is
What it is and where it is
It is one of the "villas of delight" found in Corbetta and is located behind the Shrine of the Blessed Virgin. A charming white building surrounded by a wonderful park. The main building has a characteristic U-shaped plan, whose side wings and central body overlook the courtyard of honor. The central body rests on three round arches supported by paired columns of Tuscan order. Apart from this, the façade has no special decoration but is played on overhangs and recesses, with rounded edges that give the whole a great lightness.
Why it is special
The elegant interiors deserve to be walked through at a leisurely pace to catch even the small details, such as the heraldic insignia above the door leading to the ground-floor hall and which returns almost the same in the central staircase, the frescoes in the halls and salons that emerge in part from beneath the successive plasterwork, and even some of the vents that were the terminals of a hot-air heating system.
Not to be missed
Definitely the beautiful English garden of romantic taste, where there is also an artificial grotto and an oriental-style pagoda, while the only element that refers to the taste of the Italian garden is the driveway, which creates a scenic axis centered on the villa.
A bit of history
On the plan of the Teresian land register (1722-23), the villa is not depicted in the form in which it appears today, but a pre-existing building is reproduced , which since 1755 has been the property of Don Filippo Muttoni-Visconti: it was the latter, probably, who transformed it into the present villa in the mid-1700s. According to an unverified tradition , in the years straddling the Battle of Magenta the villa is said to have housed the Austrian headquarters. In 1929 the villa was purchased by the Massari couple, whose heirs are the current owners. Today the second floor is inhabited by the owners, and the villa can be visited only on special occasions.
Trivia
Villa Massari is located in an area devoted to the cultivation of mulberry trees, yet inside it we find cellars. Indeed, from some details such as the shaped openings for barrels to roll in and out, and the drainage wells in the floor, we understand that they were also very industrious cellars. This is because mulberry cultivation is actually quite recent, but before that, until the late 1800s, the surrounding countryside was planted with vineyards.
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