The museum ticket also includes a visit to the Botanical Garden . The exhibition halls are spread over two floors and can also be reached by elevator.
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Discover the exhibition rooms:
In the early 19th century, Giovanni Battista Sommariva purchased a series of masterpieces by the greatest artists of his time, including Antonio Canova and Bertel Thorvaldsen .
Some of the art objects from this collection are still present in the villa in Tremezzo, such as the extraordinary painting depicting Romeo and Juliet's Last Kiss by Francesco Hayez from 1823.
On the second floor are the furniture, private rooms and objects of Princess Charlotte, who received the Villa as a gift in the mid-nineteenth century on the occasion of her wedding to George II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen.
Villa Carlotta houses a historical archive and is the custodian of the Belloni Zecchinelli archive.
Discover the Archives
A masterpiece, a timeless romantic icon, an example of enlightened collecting, a testing ground for scholars, and so much more.
The multichannel Museum Pass project arrives in Lombardy to tell the story of the 19th-century Lombard Network through the voices of the women and men who played a leading role.
Here is the story of Princess Charlotte, the museum and the garden
Cupid, about to awaken Psyche with a kiss from her slumber after her journey to the underworld. A replica of the famous sculpture by Antonio Canova, created between 1818 and 1820 by Adamo Tadolini.
An unmissable work that interprets the new romantic sensibility, imbued with religious suggestions.
A masterpiece by Antonio Canova, with a troubled history. It has been in this room since 1818.
The Entry of Alexander the Great into Babylon (1818-1828), by Bertel Thorvaldsen, is one of the masterpieces of nineteenth-century sculpture.
A masterpiece by Antonio Canova: the precious original plaster model of the Muse Terpsichore , from 1811.
It is our largest and most imposing room, embellished by the large decorative apparatus that unfolds on the keeled vault created by the master Lodovico Pogliaghi (1857-1950), under the direction of Duke George II.
The marble hall is the starting point for discovering other rooms, and is home to one of Villa Carlotta's masterpieces: the Frieze dedicated to Alexander the Great by Berthel Thorvaldsen.
This room contains some neoclassical plaster models. Outstanding among them is Antonio Canova’s sculpture of the Muse Terpsichore (1811).
On the walls are presented the models of some reliefs of the Arco della Pace (Arch of Peace) in Milan modelled by Luigi Acquisti and Camillo Pacetti in around 1811. The model by Luigi Acquisti representing the Entry of the Emperor Francis I to Vienna is related to the same sculptural structure, the most important in neoclassical Milan.
The plaster cameos on display in the room are part of a collection of over four hundred pieces assembled in Rome around 1820 by Giovanni Liberotti. They depict a selection of famous architecture and artworks visible in Rome, Florence, Milan, Paris, and several major private collections.
Housed in easily transportable wooden cases and provided with captions, the plaster cameos were one of the most sought-after souvenirs by Grand Tour travelers. The statues displayed along the walls come from the spires of Milan Cathedral, from which they were removed for conservation reasons in the 1950s.
At the center of a spectacular room in Villa Carlotta, one of Antonio Canova's most celebrated masterpieces stands. The sculpture portrays Palamedes, son of Nauplius, king of Euboea, the legendary inventor of the game of chess, dice, and several letters of the Greek alphabet, as well as the discoverer of one of Ulysses' most famous deceptions.
Initially exhibited in Sommariva's residence in Paris, it was then transferred to the villa in Tremezzo, in the room specially set up with large mirrors that enhanced its formal beauty.
The portrait room of the Sommariva family, which features Jean-Baptiste Wicar's 1818 Reading of the Sixth Canto of the Aeneid at the Court of Augustus .
Giovanni Battista Sommariva's Paris residence presented visitors with one of the most famous works in his collection: the Penitent Magdalene ( 1794-1796) by Antonio Canova, a replica of which is preserved in this room, commissioned by the collector specifically for the villa in Tremezzo.
Sommariva had already designed a display that highlighted the emotional power of this extraordinary sculpture, placing it alone in a room draped in gray silk drapes and placing a mirror behind it, allowing a simultaneous view of the beautiful nude. Canova's original marble sculpture is now housed in the Strada Nuova Museums in Genoa.
The Cupid and Psyche group was created between 1819 and 1824 by Adamo Tadolini, Canova's favorite pupil, to whom the master had given the plaster model of the sculpture—now in a private collection—authorizing him to reproduce it as he pleased. The work depicts the god Cupid with a kiss about to awaken Psyche from the slumber she had fallen into after her journey to the underworld.
The room houses some of the painting masterpieces that belonged to the Sommariva collection.
Pride of place goes to Romeo and Juliet's Last Kiss, painted by Francesco Hayez in 1823, inspired by Shakespeare's tragedy.
Around 1902, George II of Saxe-Meiningen commissioned Lodovico Pogliaghi (1857-1950) to redecorate some of the villa's rooms. Here, the artist drew inspiration from Pompeian painting, evoked by red tones and Renaissance grotesques, creating a lively and refined ensemble.
On the walls, some views document the appearance of the residence in the nineteenth century. The approach anchored in eighteenth-century landscape painting by Joseph-Xavier Bidauld (1819) is counterbalanced by a canvas by Giuseppe Bisi from 1823, in which nature becomes the true protagonist, opening up to the suggestions of Romanticism.
In this room, portraits of some members of Napoleon's family are displayed alongside prints from the Fasti, which chronicle Bonaparte's exploits in peace and war, from his first Italian campaign in 1796 to his victory at Friedland in 1807 against Tsar Alexander I of Russia.
The two large porcelain vases “à fuseaux” produced in Paris around 1820-1830 and decorated with motifs inspired by antiquity, taking up the models of the imperial Sèvres manufacture, instead hark back to the artistic taste of the Napoleonic era.
The room evokes the presence of Princess Charlotte of Prussia, a cultured and refined woman educated at the Berlin court, through period furnishings and ornaments. In particular, a color print reproduces a portrait of her at the age of twenty, painted by the painter Samuel Diez, a year after her marriage to George II.
Some furnishings date back to the period following Charlotte's death (29-30/3/1855), and hark back to the taste of the other two wives of Duke George II: Feodore of Hohenlohe-Langenburg (1839–1872) and Helene Franz (1839-1923).
The furniture in this living room combines various styles and materials. Particularly noteworthy are the walnut chairs and chests, in Neo-Renaissance style, dating back to the second half of the 19th century. The plaster bust of Bernhard von Saxe-Meiningen (ca. 1850) is attributed to Pompeo Marchesi.
On the walls are some prints depicting Duke George II, the large mid-nineteenth-century watercolour with a Catechism Lesson, by an anonymous author and some prints that belong to a series of forty photoengraving reproductions of paintings by Rembrandt published in Amsterdam in 1898.
The room is decorated with a large 18th-century tapestry, woven in the Brussels atelier of François van der Borght. It depicts a typical Flemish painting subject: a cheerful peasant celebration in the open air.
On the opposite side is a Renaissance painting from the collection of Duke George II. It is a Madonna with Child and Saint John the Baptist, executed in the early 16th century by an artist inspired by Perugino.
The furniture displayed in this room is an emblematic example of Duke George II's taste. They are sumptuous furnishings, embellished with gilded bronze inserts and crafted in the second half of the 19th century.
On one of the walls you can see the sketch of the fresco in the atrium of the Gallery depicting Bacchus and Ariadne on the island of Naxos , painted in the last years of the nineteenth century by Ernest Sassonia Meiningen, son of the duke and his second wife, Feodore.
Between the two windows is an Odalisque by Francesco Hayez, while on the left we find a 19th-century copy of a famous masterpiece of Italian Renaissance painting, Titian's Venus of Urbino .
The room is furnished with richly decorated French-made furniture in neoclassical style, dating back to the late 19th century. In the center is a table laden with porcelain. On the wall hangs a plaster medallion with the Portrait of Duke George II (1911) by Kasper von Zumbusch (1830-1915); along one wall is a series of prints reproducing The Triumph of Caesar by Andrea Mantegna.
This room houses the large tempera standard of the Duchy of Saxony-Meiningen. The white and green colors of Saxony, used since 1818, are flanked by the ducal coat of arms and the heraldic symbols of the territories belonging to it.
The Duke also inherited the precious volumes of botany and literature in German and the collection of color photographic reproductions, dating back to around 1900. Among these are the portraits made by Jan van Eyck and Roger van der Weyden, Flemish painters of the fifteenth century, which testify to the Duke's passion for the figurative arts.
This room features rich reddish mahogany veneer furniture with numerous gilded bronze applications: the large wardrobe with bronze capitals depicting Egyptian heads, the pair of beds decorated with mythological figures, and the elegant mirror. In the center of the room is a cherrywood cradle with gilded bronze decorations and mother-of-pearl inlays, in Neo-Gothic style. On the walls are three angels in rich gilded frames, tempera paintings from the second half of the 19th century, inspired by ancient models.
