Parco di Villa Finzi

What a history this park holds! Parco di Villa Finzi’s story begins long ago, with the Hungarian Count Batthyany, an Ussari officer, who had a villa built here in 1829. He commissioned a garden, a vision of beauty, with a lake, a cafe, greenhouses, and two neoclassical temples. The Count’s vision was just the beginning, though. Fanny Finzi Ottolenghi, a new owner later in the nineteenth century, turned the park into a haven for the community. The garden became a ‘Casa-Giardino’ for the children of Gorla, a shelter for disabled children, and eventually even a home for a large recuperation centre. In 1934, the municipality took ownership and transformed the park into the public space it is today. You can still see signs of the past. Look around, and you’ll discover a small neoclassical temple, known as the ‘Temple of the Night’, tucked inside a cave under a hill. Then, there’s the circular ‘Temple of Innocence’ with its beautiful wisteria, which, it’s believed, once stood upon an artificial island in the centre of a lake. There’s much to discover in Parco di Villa Finzi, a place that holds the whispers of history and serves as a beautiful public space for those who visit it today.