Villa Pliniana is a villa originally built in 1573, on the site of a more modest pre-existing building, in the territory of the municipality of Torno, in the province of Como, on the right bank of the western branch of Lake Como.
Fonte Pliniana The villa, located in a wooded inlet of the lake, took its name from Pliny the Younger, who described an intermittent karst spring present there in a letter addressed to his friend Lucius Licinius Sura. An excerpt from the letter reads:
In place of a small gift from my hometown I have brought you a problem worthy of your very profound science. A spring arises from the mountain, descends through the rocks, collects in a small room suitable for lunch, cut by hand of man. After holding back for a while, it falls into Lake Lario. It has a strange nature: three times a day it rises and falls for certain increases and decreases. Perhaps a more hidden air current now opens the opening and channels of the spring and now closes them (...) Perhaps the intermittence is due to an underground wind or perhaps an alternating flow and reflux in the spring, like a high and low tide in the sea. You can have a meal and eat it next to it, while the water flows with your cup from the very refreshing spring. In the meantime, it disappears and then comes back in a regular time. A reference to the spring can also be found in the work Naturalis historia by Pliny the Elder, in which it is reported that "In the Como area, near the shores of Lake Lario, there is a copious spring that always grows and falls every hour". In the Leicester Codex and in Codex Atlanticus, Leonardo described his visit to the spring which took place a few years before the palace was built. Leonardo went to the lake area, on behalf of the Duchy of Milan, in search of iron minerals necessary to produce weapons, agricultural tools and tools (the Duke of Milan, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, was personally interested in the exploitation of iron veins, on which the hopes of development of the Lombard industry rested, along with the mines of Ticino and Lake Como. On 7 July 1472, the Duke ordered the construction of large exploitation works: the mineral was transformed with more modern imported techniques, the low fires and vat ovens were abandoned, in favour of the first blast furnaces of the era by Nicolò Muggiasca). This is how Leonardo's writings report:
Above Como 8 miles is the Priniana, which increases and decreases every 6 hours; and its growth makes water for 2 mills and advances, its decline causes the springs to dry up As in many places there are veins of water that six hours grow and six fall: and for myself I have seen one in Lake Como, called Fonte Priniana, which makes the aforementioned increase and decrease, so that when it pours, it grinds more mills, and when it is lacking, it falls yes, that it is like looking at the water in a deep well
History In the Middle Ages the inhabitants of Torno built some mills and plants for the processing of wool on the site. In 1573 the governor of Como, count Giovanni Anguissola, having led in 1547 the conspiracy in which Pier Luigi Farnese, Duke of Parma and Piacenza had died, decided to build a villa-fortress outside the city. The spring that rises directly on the lake, close to the mountain and dominated by a waterfall about 80 metres high, was then enclosed in the internal courtyard of the building. Attributed to the architect Giovanni Antonio Piotti, the construction was completed in 1577. The heirs sold it in 1590 to Pirro I Visconti Borromeo, who completed it and terraced the surrounding land to be used for the cultivation of vine and chestnut. In 1676 it was sold again to Francesco Canarisi of Torno, who had frescos in the rooms and added portraits of his ancestors and of the Plinii. A small chapel dedicated to San Francesco was also built. In 1676 the Canarisi family, an important family from Como, became the owner of the Villa, keeping the property until the beginning of the 19th century.
From the beginning of the 19th century, the Pliniana passed through various owners, until in 1840 it was bought by Prince Emilio Barbiano di Belgiojoso d'Este, who conceived a complete makeover of the decoration. After a daring escape from Paris which caused a scandal at court, between 1843 and 1851 Emilio lived in the villa in the company of his mistress Anne-Marie Berthier, princess of Wagram and wife of the Duke of Plaisance. This is how the arrival of the couple is remembered:
La Pliniana opened her high gate to them and the roar of the waterfall drowned out the countess's exclamations of joy struck by such beauty. In the hall, Anna remained speechless with emotion in front of a small cabinet that Napoleon had given to his guests in 1797 to thank them for the welcome they received. Bonaparte had even thought of buying the villa which seemed to him an ideal resting place. Anna looked tenderly at the piano on which Rossini in three days had composed her Tancredi, and on a wall of the loggia she read the page of Pliny the Younger concerning the intermittent spring. After Emilio's death, the palace was still used by his wife, the princess Cristina Trivulzio di Belgiojoso, while it was later inherited by his son-in-law, Ludovico Trotti Bentivoglio. In 1890 the villa then passed to Cesare Valperga di Masino, who transferred the furnishings to the Masino castle. At the Pliniana there was also the superb portrait of the Princess, the work of Francesco Hayez The painting, after the Masino castle, is now part of a private collection (and is not accessible to the public).
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