Villa Camilla is a historic residence on north Lake Como, today the seat of Domaso Town Hall.
Built in the early 1600s as the home of Ghezzi family, it was then sold to Count Filippo Antonio Calderara who enlarged the building and the park. In 1753 the property passed to his nephew Bartolomeo, who married the Neapolitan dancer Vittoria Peluso: the two resided in Villa d’Este in Cernobbio and used the more modest Villa in Domaso as a “country house”. After Calderara’s death, Villa Camilla passed to various owners, including the Lampugnani family and the English spouses Samuel Hill and Emma, both buried in the Domaso cemetery. Later in 1903 the villa was purchased by Count Giuseppe Sebregondi, who embellished it with paintings and stuccos and enlarged the park. His sons sold the villa in 1955 to the Municipality of Domaso, which used it as a Town Hall.
The name Villa Camilla was chosen by Count Giuseppe Sebregondi, in honor of his first wife, Countess Camilla Barbiano di Belgioioso.
The villa, as well as being the seat of the Municipality of Domaso, is now used to host cultural events, concerts and events.
The Villa
The original body has a neoclassical layout characterized in the south facade by a rich granite portal, integrated by an overlying terrace in worked stone and by the symmetry of the openings. Like other buildings of the time on Lake Como, the villa has an alignment of the central openings between the lake front and the opposite one, so that a view of the lake was possible from the garden too. If the structure of the villa has remained substantially unchanged up to the present day, this is not the same for the pictorial decorations and for the plasters that have been redone several times.
The garden
Villa Camilla is located in a park of about 8000 meters. characterized by artificial nineteenth-century tuff caves and a prestigious gate dating back to 1700. In the garden there are many varieties of camellias, cedars and conifers.
