Built in the 18th century as the Marquis of Menafoglio’s “palace of delights”, the place where he held his parties and events, after changing owners a few times, the villa was bought in the 1950s by Count Giuseppe Panza di Biumo, a man with a passion for contemporary art.

From this point onwards Giuseppe Panza turned the villa into a veritable artistic hub, with renowned painters and sculptors coming and going, leaving their mark on the villa’s decor with masterpieces of environmental and conceptual art.

Today Villa Panza can boast a collection of over 100 masterpieces which blend in perfectly with the decor and furnishings all from different eras from the 18th to the 20th century, making the villa’s interior truly unique.

In 1996 the owners donated the villa to the FAI, the Italian National Trust, who carried out the necessary renovations and opened it to the public in 2001: from then on Villa Panza has been a Mecca for art lovers and tourists who come to admire the villa and visit the contemporary art exhibitions it hosts.

Surrounded by splendid gardens covering 33,000 sqm, Villa Panza overlooks the city of Varese from the hill known as Biumo Superiore. More than one hundred works of art by contemporary artists are displayed in the villa’s halls and large stables as well as priceless period furnishings and an important collection of African and pre-Columbian art. The outbuildings in the service wing have been completely transformed to house environmental artworks by Robert Irwin, Maria Nordman and James Turrell, who designed new installations especially to suit these spaces and experimented with colour and light. Next door the colours from neon light installations by Dan Flavin chase away any shadows that may have once lurked as they create new shapes with three-dimensional paintings within which to move and breathe.