La Montesca was the aristocratic summer residence that the barons Leopoldo and Giulio Franchetti had built in the second half of the nineteenth century on the descending slope of Mount Arnato, designed by the Florentine architect Giuseppe Boccini. The villa overlooks from a panoramic position the upper course of the Tiber and Città di Castello: the typical landscape of the Valtiberina, with its gentle hills, cultivated plain, and woods frames this example of a nineteenth-century villa, inspired by the Renaissance and Mannerism. The villa consists of three bodies: the central one with three floors flanked by two higher protruding lateral ones, like towers, due to the loggia floor covered by a pronounced roof, in the Florentine style. Each facade is marked by the arched entrance portal, the arches of the portico, and stone bugne windows. The interior of the villa is elegant, rich in sumptuous rooms with paintings and sculptures by Clemente Marini, Giovanni Panti, Ernesto Bellanti, and Antonio Passaglia. The complex also includes the caretaker’s house, the lemon house, the guesthouse, and the Montessori school. It was precisely at Villa “La Montesca” that, in 1901, the free elementary school for the children of farmers was born, the place where Maria Montessori’s educational experience began, called by Alice Franchetti Hallgarten, an American wife of Senator Leopoldo Franchetti, a cultured woman endowed with an enlightened philanthropic spirit. In front lies the large garden with a central basin. The English park, a true botanical garden, is rich in a variety of essences from America. The villa, owned by the Umbria Region, has maintained its educational vocation. It indeed houses a training and research center.
Information about Villa Franchetti “La Montesca”
Via della Montesca,
06012 Città di Castello (Perugia)
075 8522185
info@montesca.it
https://www.montesca.it
Source: MIBACT
