Long before Cardinal Angelo Maria Durini fell in love with the promontory of Lavedo and had his splendid villa built there, a monastery of Franciscan monks stood here, probably erected between 1200 and 1300.
In 1787, a new residence was built in its place, which the prelate called Balbianello to distinguish it from the larger Balbiano residence he had previously purchased from Cardinal Gallio.
Over the next two centuries, the estate changed hands several times and inevitably underwent transformations. Everything you can admire today is mainly the work of the entrepreneur Guido Monzino, who completely renovated the villa, also changing the frescoes and furnishings, and fashioned the garden into the complex shapes that still characterize it today.
Monzino bought it in 1975 and, on his death in 1988, donated it to FAI, the Fondo Ambiente Italiano, together with a substantial bequest that would allow the structure and gardens to be maintained exactly as he had designed them.
Unlike the park, the rooms of the villa can only be visited under the supervision of an FAI guide, with the possibility of admiring furnishings, tapestries and art objects. Among the most impressive rooms is the central loggia that houses the library, with a vast collection of books on mountaineering, and the cartographers' room, where maps and vintage prints of the lake are collected. Also unique is the Expedition Museum, which collects all the memorabilia related to the exploits carried out by Monzino.
You should know that his greatest passion was travelling and mountaineering. He completed 21 expeditions on five continents, including nine on the glaciers of Greenland. He was the first Italian mountaineer to conquer the summit of Everest in 1973, and the only one to have reached the North Pole by sled. He set off equipped with 14 sleds pulled by 180 dogs, accompanied by 22 indigenous guides.
When he bought the villa, he had a project in mind: to set up a foundation dedicated to mountaineering studies and the Poles. Sadly, he died suddenly at only 60 years of age, but he had already created the Museum of Expeditions, where he neatly collected maps and travel instruments, including one of the sleds used to reach the Pole.
Here's an interesting fact: Monzino jokingly liked to call Villa Balbianello his twenty-second Great Enterprise because it took him a good twenty years to realize his dream of buying it.
