Villa Fogazzaro Roi

Located on the shores of Lake Lugano, in the municipality of Oria Valsolda, in the province of Como, Villa Fogazzaro Roi is today the most precious treasure chest of memories of the writer Antonio Fogazzaro, who in fact elected the Villa to its "place of the soul" most of his greatest literary achievements.

Originally owned by the parish of San Sebastiano, the Villa passed, around the second half of the 1800s, to the Barrera family, to which Teresa Barrera, mother of Antonio Fogazzaro belonged. The writer settled there at an early age, between 1848 and 1849, welcomed by his maternal uncle Pietro, to move away from his native Veneto at that time still oppressed by Austrian rule. In 1900 the villa passed to the Fogazzaro family, who became acquainted in 1888 with the Marquises Roi, entrepreneurs from Vicenza.

Today the Villa presents itself as the unification of several buildings, built around a first original building dating back to the 16th century, of which the roof garden still remains. The considerable number of rooms for hospitality and conviviality testify to the great vitality of the house at the time of Fogazzaro, especially during the summer, with a continuous coming and going of guests and friends of the family and the writer.

In 1960 the Marquis Giuseppe Roi, great-grandson of Fogazzaro, received as inheritance from his paternal uncle Antonio la Villa, becoming the sole custodian of his memories. He himself called himself: "descendent and attentive, affectionate depositary and custodian of the few material memories, spared from two wars!"

The restoration and modernization of the dwelling made in the middle of the last century, have allowed many original furnishings and relics to return to the abode of Oria, allowing it to recover its most authentic dimension. The Marquis Roi had a new area of ​​the house built, in which they found the Dining Room and its Studio, attached to the Bedroom. The two upper floors of the Villa were also affected by the works carried out by Roi, with the aim of making the numerous bedrooms and the lounges dedicated to guests more welcoming. Among these the Antonio Fogazzaro Chamber stands out for its importance, which still preserves the original richly decorated wooden bed.

Villa Fogazzaro Roi preserves inside the memories of the writer who chose to set most of his trilogy, composed of Piccolo mondo antico, Piccolo mondo moderna and Il santo, right in Oria Valsolda and its surroundings. Therefore, the perfect correspondence between reality and literary fiction can not be ignored in the most minute details: like the olea fragrans of the hanging garden, the terrazzino of Franco with his aerial "cupolina" and the "round table" in wrought iron, the «red and yellow Turkish knights» embroidered half a point from Luisa in the Loggia and many others ..

In the Stanza dell'Alcova there is a very special object: the writing desk by Antonio Fogazzaro. What makes it unique and of great value, if you can say so, "literary" are the numerous annotations that punctuate the inside of the drawer: there are even on the edges, partly erased by the rubbing of the wood caused by the continuous opening and closure. A touching note, perhaps the most significant, appeals to his son Mariano, who died of typhus in 1895: "Mariano, Mariano, my Mariano! Out of all vanity, from every passion I gather my heart in God and in you, 11-8-95 ». Another, with a tragic coincidence of dates, informs us of the end of his most famous novel: «The Little Ancient World, 11-8-95» ended in tears.

Strongly fond of its origins, the Marquis Roi dedicated himself to the enhancement of the work of his great-grandfather Antonio Fogazzaro: it is not surprising that, in 2009, the Marquis entrusted the Villa di Oria to the care of the FAI, so that it could open it to the public and make a tasting of the real Piccolo mondo antico, among memorabilia, photographs and testimonies of a bourgeois family at the end of the nineteenth century, immersed in the magnificent landscapes of Ceresio, between lake and mountain.