Villa Carlotta

Grand Hotel Tremezzo is a historic luxury hotel located on the shores of Lake Como in Italy.

Tremezzo is a comune (or municipality) of some 1,300 people in the Province of Como, in the Italian region Lombardy. It is one of I Borghi più belli d'Italia ("The most beautiful villages of Italy"). It is located on the western shore of Lake Como between Mezzegra to the southwest and Griante to the northeast, and about 20 kilometres (12 mi) from Como. Tremezzo, which has an area of 8.4 square kilometres (3.2 sq mi), also borders the territory of the following communes: Lenno (south and west of Mezzegra), Menaggio (north of Griante), Grandola ed Uniti (inland from Menaggio) and, on the facing shore of the lake, Bellagio and Lezzeno. As well as the capoluogo of Tremezzo, the area of the commune includes the frazione Rogaro, birthplace of the architect Pietro Lingeri. Tremezzo is best known as a tourist resort—it was a favourite of Konrad Adenauer—and for its villas, of which the most famous is the Villa Carlotta with its much-admired gardens, and Villa Sola-Busca. The Brentano family hails from the Tremezzo, in the 17th century the family relocated to the Free City of Frankfurt. Members of the family include 19th century German Romanticist novelist Clemens Brentano and his sister Bettina von Arnim. The comune of Tremezzo was united with Mezzegra, Ossuccio, and Lenno to form a single municipality named Tremezzina following the election of the Major on 25 May 2014.

Cadenabbia (Cadenabbia di Griante) is a small community in Lombardy, Italy, in the province of Como, on the west shore of Lake Como. The community is part of the comune of Griante, between the communities of Menaggio and Tremezzo. Cadenabbia is a favorite spring and autumn resort, owing to the great beauty of the scenery and of the vegetation, and its sheltered situation. It also serves as a health resort and a holiday place for travellers. A favoured travel destination of the British since the 19th century, it is the site of one of the first Anglican churches built in Italy (1891).

Tremezzina (Comasco: Tremezéna [tremeˈdzena]) is a comune in the province of Como, in Lombardy, that formed on 25 May 2014 from a merger of the comunes of Lenno, Mezzegra, Ossuccio and Tremezzo. A referendum to create this comune was held on 1 December 2013. The referendum was passed with 63% yes and 37% no votes. The comune of Tremezzina was previously created in 1928 over Lenno, Mezzegra and Tremezzo, and divided into the separate comunes in 1947.

Bellagio (Italian: [belˈlaːdʒo]; Comasco: Belàs [beˈlaːs]) is a comune (municipality) in the Province of Como in the Italian region of Lombardy. It is located on Lake Como, also known by its Latin-derived name Lario, whose arms form an inverted Y. The triangular land mass at the base of the inverted Y is the Larian Triangle: at its northern point sits Bellagio, looking across to the northern arm of the lake and, behind it, the Alps. It has always been famous for its location. It belongs to a mountain community named Comunità montana del Triangolo lariano (Larian Triangle mountain community), based in Canzo.

Villa Pessina is an eclectic villa located in Tremezzo on the shores of Lake Como, Italy.

Villa Melzi (also known as Villa Melzi d'Eril) is a neoclasssical villa located in Bellagio on the shores of Lake Como, Italy.

Giulino (also known as Giulino di Mezzegra) is an Italian frazione of the Comune of Mezzegra, in the province of Como. Since 21 January 2014 both Giulino and Mezzegra are included in the comune of Tremezzina.

Mezzegra is a former comune (municipality) in the Province of Como in the Italian region Lombardy. Since 21 January 2014 it is part of the comune of Tremezzina.

Benito Mussolini, the deposed Italian fascist dictator, was summarily executed by an Italian partisan in the village of Giulino di Mezzegra in northern Italy on 28 April 1945, in the final days of World War II in Europe. The generally accepted version of events is that Mussolini was shot by Walter Audisio, a communist partisan. However, since the end of the war, the circumstances of Mussolini's death, and the identity of his executioner, have been subjects of continuing dispute and controversy in Italy. In 1940, Mussolini took his country into World War II on the side of Nazi Germany but soon was met with military failure. By the autumn of 1943, he was reduced to being the leader of a German puppet state in northern Italy and was faced with the Allied advance from the south and an increasingly violent internal conflict with the partisans. In April 1945, with the Allies breaking through the last German defences in northern Italy and a general uprising of the partisans taking hold in the cities, Mussolini's situation became untenable. On 25 April he fled Milan, where he had been based, and headed towards the Swiss border. He and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, were captured on 27 April by local partisans near the village of Dongo on Lake Como. Mussolini and Petacci were executed the following afternoon, two days before Adolf Hitler's suicide. The bodies of Mussolini and Petacci were taken to Milan and left in a suburban square, the Piazzale Loreto, for a large angry crowd to insult and physically abuse. They were then hung upside down from a metal girder above a service station on the square. Initially, Mussolini was buried in an unmarked grave but, in 1946, his body was dug up and stolen by fascist supporters. Four months later it was recovered by the authorities who then kept it hidden for the next eleven years. Eventually, in 1957, his remains were allowed to be interred in the Mussolini family crypt in his home town of Predappio. His tomb has become a place of pilgrimage for neo-fascists and the anniversary of his death is marked by neo-fascist rallies. In the post-war years, the "official" version of Mussolini's death has been questioned in Italy (although not internationally, in general) in a manner that has drawn comparison with the John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories. Some journalists, politicians and historians, doubting the veracity of Audisio's account, have advanced a wide variety of theories and speculation as to how Mussolini died and who was responsible. At least twelve different individuals have, at various times, been claimed to be the killer. These have included Luigi Longo and Sandro Pertini who subsequently became general secretary of the Italian Communist Party and President of Italy respectively. Some writers believe that Mussolini's death was part of a Special Operations Executive operation, with the supposed aim of retrieving compromising "secret agreements" and correspondence with Winston Churchill that Mussolini had allegedly been carrying when he was captured. However, the "official" explanation, with Audisio as Mussolini's executioner, remains the most credible narrative.

Grand Hotel Villa Serbelloni is a historic luxury hotel located in Bellagio on the shores of Lake Como in Italy.

Villa Serbelloni is a villa in Bellagio, Northern Italy. Just behind the hill of the promontory into the lake of Como, protected from the winds, the villa dominates the town's historic centre. It can be reached from Via Garibaldi. It was built in the 15th century in place of an old castle razed in 1375. Villa Serbelloni was later rebuilt several times. In 1788 it came into the possession of Alessandro Serbelloni (1745–1826) who enriched it with precious decorations and works of art of the 17th and 18th centuries. Today you can visit only the gardens. On the inside, elegant halls with vault and coffered ceilings follow one another accurately decorated in the style of the 17th and 18th centuries. All around, the park develops along most of the promontory of Bellagio with vast tracts of thick woods where the Serbelloni gardeners had traced paths which nowadays still lead the way amongst the small clearings and English style gardens. As noted by Balbiani, rather than being a garden, it is a real "wood, opened by spacious and comfortable paths, and plants with all generations of high trunk trees"; amongst which, oak trees, conifers, fir trees, holm oaks, osmanti, myrtles and junipers, "but above all trees, here situated is the pine tree, which, with its gnarled trunk acts as a screen against the storms". Occasionally, the vegetation thins out at panoramic points which overlook the two branches of the lake, offering a prospect from the slopes of the hill, where the rose bushes flower during the season. There is a winding path which goes up to the villa, also terraces and flower beds with yews and boxes trimmed geometrically. Along the upper part of the park is a long row of cypress trees and some palm trees. In 1905, the villa was transformed into a luxury hotel. In 1959 it became the property of the Rockefeller Foundation of New York at the bequest of the American-born Princess of Thurn and Taxis (wife of Alessandro, 1st Duke of Castel Duino), who had bought it in 1930. Since 1960 the Bellagio Center in the villa has been home to international conferences housed in the former villa or in the grounds. In addition, outstanding scholars and artists are selected for one-month residencies year-round. In June 1963, U.S. President John F. Kennedy stopped at the Villa after his helicopter landed in the grounds on a visit to Lake Como.