The villa is located on the remote peninsula of Olgiasca, overlooking the lake. Forming a crown of gardens, orchards, meadows and vineyards. The very simple 19th century building incorporates a previous structure dating from the period of Spanish rule of the Duchy of Milan: one bolt of a portal is inscribed with the date 1537. The main facade, facing the lake, has four rows of arches with five arches on each floor. Presumably it was built by a wealthy family from Gravedona, but no details of the name of neither the architect nor the client are known. In front of the villa, from immemorial times, there is a marina that was once used for trade and for the transport of persons, when the lake was a great means of communication between the local lake communities and the cities of the plain. In particular, the pier was used to load slabs of marble from Olgiasca. In the Teresian land registry of 1760 the large building appears under the title of “Cassina Malpensata”, a clear sign that it functioned as a manor house with its employees assigned to the work of the surrounding land, and certainly with the villages above. In 1905 the new land registry called the agricultural complex estates of Malpensata.
It is currently owned by the Priory of Piona and headquarters of the rehabilitation center ‘Comunità - Il Gabbiano’.
(Text from the Brochure "Colico Outdoor")
