Starting with the seventeenth century (although with greater intensity after 1700) the Milanese nobility chose the pre-Alps as their elected place for their mainly summer sojourns. The choice and structuring of the places of the so-called ville di delizia or villas for rest and pleasure was principally carried out on the basis of criterion of a landscape type, preference being given to the high hill sites from which it was possible to enjoy a view of the lakes and the ring of the Alps. All of this was decisive not only in the architectural design of the buildings and parks but also in determining the concentration in the zone. Precisely the urbanistic conformation of Varese, articulated in an historical nucleus surrounded by scattered settlements, lent itself to the transformation of agricultural settlements into villas for the pleasure of mainly the Milanese nobility.

Bernardo Bellotto: Veduta of the Gazzada (1744) (Foto P. Zanzi)

This transformation also applied to the various buildings in the surrounding valleys and countryside.
It was in this way that one had the establishment of splendid settlements in Azzate, Casciago but above all in the Castellanies of Varese (from among which the extraordinary concentration of Colle di Biumo stands out).
Not that Varese did not have luxurious palaces - for example, that of the Griffi family which hosted the town's first theatre - but the Colle di Biumo (Hill of Biumo) presented a formidable concentration of prestigious buildings.
This phenomenon which was completed during the eighteenth century was the prelude to the city's tourist vocation that would only be established later, reaching the point of major development during the first decades of this century with the full development of the transport networks.

How to get there