Villa Olmo, the most important among Como’s historic residences, conceals an ancient heart beneath its neoclassical forms and stands as a bright example of the city’s many layers, shaped first by the Plinys, then by Paolo Giovio, and finally by Alessandro Volta. It was built between 1782 and 1787 by Marquis Innocenzo Odescalchi, based on a design by the Ticinese architect Simone Cantoni, on the site where a medieval monastery of the Umiliati had previously stood. However, Giovanni Battista Giovio, a descendant of Paolo, argued in his Lettere Lariane (1803) that a villa had already existed there in Roman times: that of Caninius Rufus, described by Pliny the Younger in a letter (Epistulae I, 3) addressed to his poet friend, the fortunate owner of the property. “How is Como, our shared delight? And the charming suburban estate? And the plane-tree grove dense with shade?”… Giovio cites fragments of mosaic flooring and marble discovered between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, as well as a personal inspection that convinced him that this was the location of the ancient Comense suburbanus. Acquired by the Municipality of Como in 1925, Villa Olmo served as the main venue for the Volta celebrations of 1927 and, in its Hall of Honor, preserves a bust of the inventor of the electric battery—specifically one of the copies of Giovanni Battista Comolli’s sculpture chosen for the scientist’s tomb in the cemetery of Camnago Volta. In the Hall of Mirrors, another bust is dedicated to a member of the Giovio family, Felicia (1781–1849), daughter of Giovanni Battista, who lived in the villa for a period with her first husband, Innocenzo Porro Carcano.
