The Park and Garden of Villa La Montesca

Villa Montesca was built in the second half of the nineteenth century on the design of the Florentine architect Boccini, by the will of the barons Leopoldo and Giulio Franchetti, who raised it as an aristocratic summer residence in the middle of the sloping side of Mount Arnato.
The estate, situated on a hill in a wood of secular trees and rare botanical species, overlooks the panoramic view of Città di Castello.
The typical landscape of Valtiberina with its rolling hills, the cultivated plain and the woods, frames this example of late nineteenth-century villa, inspired by the Renaissance and Mannerism.
The Villa itself consists of three parts: the central one with three floors flanked by two protruding and higher sides, such as towers, by virtue of the gallery floor covered by a decisively pronounced roof according to the Florentine style.
Each façade is characterized by the arched entrance portal, the porch arches and the rows of windows with ashlars made of “pietra serena”.
The elegant interior of the villa is full of sumptuous rooms decorated with paintings and sculptures by artists such as Clemente Marini, Giovanni Panti, Ernesto Bellanti and Antonio Passaglia.
The complex also includes the caretaker's house, the lemon grove, the Montessori school and the guesthouse.
On the front of the villa, there is the large garden with the large central pool.
The English garden, a real botanical garden, rich in a wide variety of species from America, from cold and temperate areas of Europe and Asia (marked by labels with botanical signs of recognition) develops all around with its dense, high-pinched vegetation which mixes itself with the spontaneous one of the mountain on which it extends.