Built in the first half of the eighteenth century just below the top of the hill of Biumo in a dominating position with respect to the small town below it, it was enlarged during the second part of the XVIII century by Marquis Paolo Antonio Menafoglio.
The villa has a 'U' plan facing the internal garden, offering the person who comes from the outside with a simple facade lacking the ornamentation and sumptuousness of other, analogous constructions. The project choice of privileging the side of the building facing the courtyard and the park in the aesthetic and building research was conceived in order to favour the intimacy and well-being of its guests and not to represent the wealth and power of its owners.
This corresponded to the feelings of the illustrious visitors who stayed there, if what is contained in the notes written in 1762 by Vincenzo Marliani, an eighteenth-century chronicler from Varese, is true. Recalling the stay by Francesco III d'Este at the home of Paolo Antonio Menafoglio, he wrote that the Duke was grieved to leave this place . And regarding the sojourn in Biumo Superiore by Carlo di Firmian in August of the same year, the same chronicler noted that after having experienced the hospitality of the Marquis Menafoglio the Count left with tears in his eyes due to the regret for having to leave this delightful town.
That Francesco III liked this delightful town is beyond question given that four years later he became its Lord, the people of Varese in 1766 losing the privilege of freedom from feudal dominations so strenuously defended in the preceding centuries. It was precisely in the Menafoglio home, on the 29th of June of that year, that the ceremony of the submission of the regents of the township to the Duke was held.
Also Domenico Balestrieri, was a guest of Marquis Menafoglio to whom he dedicated the sonnet entitled Al sig. Marchese Don Paolo Antonio Menafoglio per la sua deliziosissima villa in Biumo superiore.
Following the death of Paolo Antonio Menafoglio in 1788 the villa passed into the hands of Marquis Don Benigno Bossi, collegiate jurisconsult of Milan and, from the opening years of the last century, of Duke Antonio Litta.
Since 1931 it has belonged to the Panza family. In the villa Giuseppe Panza has a collection of works by contemporary artists - American in particular - which he began in the middle of the 1950's. In 1996 the villa passed to the Fondo per l'ambiente italiano, which is restoring it with the contribution of the Province of Varese and private citizens._