History
Count Pirro I Visconti Borromeo conceived the building of Villa Visconti Borromeo Litta in the style of a Tuscan villa on the outskirts of Milan around 1585 when he decided to introduce leisure into his agricultural estate in Lainate. An unusual Milanese patron of the arts, he called upon all the best artists working in Lombardy, including the architect Martino Bassi, the sculptors Francesco Brambilla the Younger and Marco Antonio Prestinari, the painters Camillo Procaccini and Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli known as il Morazzone. He also commissioned the garden and nymphaeum, known as the ''Water Palace''.
After passing through the hands of various owners, from the Litta family to the Weill Weiss, the villa was bought by the Lainate Municipality in 1970, which began to bring it back to life. Today visitors can admire the palace halls frescoed by Giuseppe Levati in the eighteenth century as well as the Festivities Hall and the painted ceilings from the sixteenth century. The spectacle continues outside in the Italian style gardens with the eighteenth century fountain dedicated to Galathea and Neptune and the park with 820 trees of 56 different species. The nymphaeum comes as a surprise, considered to be the most important example in northern Italy for richness of decoration and water games. It was constructed between 1585 and 1589, completely covered in white, black or tempera painted pebbles, unique in the history of mosaic work. Some areas hide recently restored water tricks: to take a stroll here can involve being struck by the enchantment of a statue of Venus, mythological figures in mosaic or an unexpected water jet managed by clever ''fountain attendants''.
