Perugia, Villa del Colle del Cardinale monumental complex opens to the public after 20 years

On Friday, May 18, 2018, the monumental complex of the Villa del Colle del Cardinale in Perugia opens its doors to the public after being closed for 20 years, and will be managed by the Polo Museale dell’Umbria. Until now, the Villa could only be visited during special openings, and on the occasion of its reopening on Saturday, May 19, Museums Day, there will be all-day educational activities and guided tours.

The Villa is perhaps the best known and most important of Umbria’s residential complexes, and was commissioned in the mid-16th century by Cardinal Fulvio della Corgna, nephew of Pope Julius III: the della Corgna family owned a fief that stretched from Lake Trasimeno to the Tiber plain, and its possessions included the hill, just outside Perugia, on which they had the villa built, which served the dual function of a country residence and a vast agricultural estate. In fact, the building is surrounded by large green areas, and the original design of the complex, which some scholars attribute to Galeazzo Alessi (Perugia, 1512 - 1572), and others to Jacopo Barozzi known as il Vignola (Vignola, 1507 - Rome, 1573), included the creation of an Italianate garden and an area to be used for crops, with vegetable gardens, orchards and olive groves. The Oddi family, who in 1644 with Count Cornelio II acquired the property of the complex, transformed the environmental context by modeling the garden on the taste of the seventeenth century first and the eighteenth century later: precisely in the eighteenth century the Oddi family also decided on the creation of an English-style park according to the fashions of the time. The villa became so famous that in 1819 even the Emperor of Austria, Francis I, wanted to stay there, and even today the park is home to a great variety of botanical species.

As for the villa, it was built in 1575: Fulvio della Corgna wanted a large palace, austere and developed on a rectangular plan and five floors (basement, mezzanine floor, first noble floor, second floor and attic). The villa also underwent some changes in the 17th century, with the construction of the small towers, while in the 19th century stairways, fountains, statues, pinnacles and balustrades were added to the complex. After several changes of ownership, in 1997 the villa became part of the patrimony of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, which initiated a long restoration conducted by the Superintendence for Architectural Heritage and Landscape of Umbria, which ended with the complete recovery of the entire complex.

The Villa del Colle del Cardinale will now become a museum venue and a space for temporary exhibitions that will also extend to the garden and park. “The opening of the Villa,” specifies Tiziana Biganti, director of the Villa, “is an important signal for the enhancement of cultural heritage, since it will allow the fruition of the most relevant sixteenth-century residential complex present in Umbria.”

Perugia, Villa del Colle del Cardinale monumental complex opens to the public after 20 years

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