La Montesca was the aristocratic summer residence that Barons Leopoldo and Giulio Franchetti had built in the second half of the nineteenth century, on the sloping side 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 the gentle hills, the cultivated plain, and the woods frames this example of a nineteenth-century villa, inspired by the Renaissance and Mannerism. The villa is composed of three bodies: the central one with three floors flanked by two higher projecting lateral ones, like a tower, by virtue of the covered loggia floor with a pronounced roof, in the Florentine style. Each facade is marked by an arched entrance portal, the arches of the porch, and stone ashlar windows. The interior of the villa is elegant, rich with sumptuous rooms featuring 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”, in 1901, that the free elementary school for the children of peasants was established, the place where the educational experience of Maria Montessori began, called by Alice Franchetti Hallgarten, an American wife of Senator Leopoldo Franchetti, a cultured woman endowed with an enlightened philanthropic spirit. In front, there is a large garden with a central pool. The English park, a real botanical garden, is rich in varieties of plants from America. The villa, owned by the Umbria Region, has maintained its educational vocation. It hosts 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
