Tourism

Fai restores the Lerici garden, in the places of Byron and Shelley

English-style park at Villa Rezzola refurbished. 3.5 million investment with NRP funding and investment from private individuals and companies

by Raoul de Forcade

1 June 2025

La sala della musica di villa Rezzola, a Lerici, provincia di La Spezia, Liguria. (Foto Matteo Cupella - 2021 -FAI - Fondo per l’Ambiente Italiano)

4' min read

Key points

The Countess' Legate
Collaboration with the university

4' min read

With an investment of about 3.5 million euro (of which 2 million euro from the NRF and further funding from private individuals and companies), the Italian Environmental Fund (Fai) has completed the restoration of the English garden of Villa Rezzola in Lerici (La Spezia), one of the most beautiful gardens on the Riviera di Levante, overlooking the Gulf of Poets, which takes its name from two great exponents of Anglo-Saxon literature, George Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelly, who loved it.

Villa Rezzola is an ancient residence, with a large park and a long history: documented as far back as the 16th century, inhabited by local aristocrats in the 19th century, in 1900 it was purchased by a wealthy English couple, the Cochrane family, who adapted the villa to their style and, above all, gave the park the form of a typical English garden, which it still retains. Sold in 1935 to Countess Mara Braida Carnevale, during the Second World War it was requisitioned by the army and used as the headquarters of the military command, first Italian, by Aimone d'Aosta, and then German, by Rudolf Jacobs, a naval captain who had sided with the partisans and died a hero of the Resistance on the heights of Sarzana.

The Countess' Legate

From Countess Carnevale's daughter, Maria Adele, known as Pupa, who lived there with her husband, Piero Miniati, the villa was bequeathed to Fai in 2020 "so that it could be restored, enhanced and opened to many visitors"; and so that it would be well maintained, thanks also to a generous dowry accompanying the testamentary bequest, consisting of real estate assets in Rome and Lerici.

With an investment of approximately 2.3 million euro, against a contribution of 2 million received from the Ministry of Culture under the Pnrr (Programmes to enhance the identity of places: parks and historic gardens), the FAI has restored and upgraded 1.5 hectares of green areas around the villa, which have been open to visitors again for a few days. In addition to this work, 1.2 million euro has been invested to complete the restoration of balustrades, stairs and belvedere, to restore and adapt the entrance house, where the ticket office and shop are located, and to create other public reception and cultural services, as well as to secure the villa's exterior and illuminate the garden.

Restauro del giardino di villa Rezzola a Lerici, nei luoghi di Byron e Shelley
Photogallery8 foto

In addition, the Fai is raising funds to start a new building site that will complete, over the next few years, the restoration of the park and, above all, of the villa, from the installations to the interiors, from the decorations to the collections of furnishings, objects and documents, and the addition of further recreational and cultural facilities. In any case, in parallel with the garden restoration site, Fai has already completed some work on the interior of the villa, particularly in the rooms on the ground floor, which can already be visited in its entirety.

The tour allows visitors to appreciate rooms characterised by the typical early 20th-century English taste of the Cochrane family and winds its way through the entrance hall and atrium, the living room, from which there is access to the large panoramic terrace overlooking the sea and the Gulf of Poets, the dining room with the ceiling decorated with neo-Gothic motifs (which are also found in the leaded glass windows of the entrance), the sitting room, with furnishings, objects and mementos from the Carnevale family, two small studies dedicated to Maria Adele Carnevale and Piero Miniati respectively, and finally, the library or music room, with its wooden panelling, herringbone parquet flooring and bow windows facing outwards.

Collaboration with the university

Thanks to the contribution of the Pnrr and in collaboration with the University of Genoa and the University of Insubria, Fai also launched a study campaign in 2022 that has allowed for in-depth knowledge of Villa Rezzola, its history, its park, the people who lived there and the historical and cultural context in which it is set. Also of importance is the study of the garden's flora and fauna, carried out with the aim of increasing biodiversity.

In fact, as mentioned, Villa Rezzola's is a typical English garden on the Riviera, rich in species like a botanical garden, with a landscape that seems spontaneous but is artfully constructed, in which more formal, Italian-style garden spaces alternate with others, more informal, in which paths meander through the apparently wild woodland, where nymphaea, stairways and monumental belvederes spring up.

Characteristic of the garden, which denotes the experience of the British in this field, are the infrastructures, functional to an efficient management of the area, which today prove to be both useful and sustainable from an environmental point of view: a large greenhouse, an umbarium, a seedbed (which houses 18 photovoltaic panels) and a water system that captures, stores and distributes water through a dense network of canals, connected to tanks, cisterns and fountains.

At the beginning of May, Fai had completed another restoration project in Liguria: the rehabilitation, in terms of environmental protection, of Podere Lovara, at Punta Mesco (Levanto), one of the places sung about by the poet Eugenio Montale.

Raoul de Forcaderedattore
Luogo: Genova
Lingue parlate: italiano, inglese
Argomenti: shipping, nautica, economia, finanza.
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