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The British poet Shelley so described this villa: In front, among the cypress trees, the Queen of the lake / superb with its memories, the Pliniana appears.
Proud and haughty in its solitude is one of the most romantic mansions of Lake Como. It is set not too far from the village of Torno, next to the source of intermittent water the two Plinii described two thousand years ago, and after whom it was named, and next to the roaring waterfall that gushes out from a crevasse nearly 90 m. high.
Letter From C. Plinio to Licinio.
From my home town, I brought you the gift of a question worthy of your cleverness. A spring gushes from a mountain, it runs through stones and gathers in a place that was built for having meals, there it rests for a while and then it flows and vanish into the waters of the lake of Como (in Larium lacum decidit).
Its nature is peculiar: it rises and lowers three times a day with steady increasing and diminishing. One can easily see it, and it can not be seen without rejoicing. By it you seat and eat, and you drink from that spring, too, for it is very cool. And in the meanwhile, at measured intervals of time, it grows or diminishes. You put a ring, or whatsoever, in the dry and little by little the water wet it and finally covers it to then discover it again, leaving it in the dry. If you stop and stare at this play, you will see it repeated two or three times a day.
Is it perhaps that some hidden wind now closes and now opens the mouth of the source, when it enters forcing the water in, or when the water itself pushes it out? Like we see it happens with the bottles and all vases of that kind, which have not a free and prompt out flowing because, although upside-down and inclined, they delay the exit of the liquor that does not come out in any other way but in frequent hiccups!
May it be that the law of the ocean is the same as this source? And for the same reason why it now rises and now lowers, also this spring alternatively now rises and now stops? Or perhaps, like the rivers that while entering into the sea are pushed back by the adverse winds or by the impetuosity of the waves, there is something that delays the course of this spring for a few moments? Or perhaps the inner channels have a given measure, for which reason, while the waters are being voided the stream becomes scanty and slow, and when they are wasted it runs faster and abundant? Or perhaps there is an unknown inner and hidden recipient that when it is empty it wakes and pushes the spring up and when it is full it delay and suffocates it? Now, you who are able to do it, please investigate on the reasons that cause this phenomenon. As for myself, it is more than enough if I succeeded in sufficiently describing you how it happens. Goodbye".
The historian Paolo Giovio also mentioned this spring, but Cristiano Calco was the first writer who, in describing the wedding of Bianca Maria Sforza, gave source the name of Pliniana in 1493. The spring was later enclosed into an atrium in Doric style.
The great building set on the verge of a cliff overlooking the lake, has a wide loggia from where it is possible to hear the gurgling of the spring waters and the continuous braking of the waves over the rocks. It was bought, not built, by Earl Giovanni Anguissola, Governor of the town of Como, in 1573. In 1578, at the death of Earl Anguissola, the Pliniana mansion was inherited by his grandson Giulio, who sold it to the family Borromeo Visconti in December 22nd 1590. Soon after, the villa passed in property to Marquis Canarisi from Como.
In 1671, the renowned geologist Paolo Sarnone stood in the villa a whole week for studying the phenomenon of the intermittent source, without being able to explain it. To visit the Pliniana came Emperor Joseph 2nd of Austria, as it is recorded by the historian Joseffo Della Torre Rezzonico, and also the scientist Alessandro Volta and Earl Firmian were guest in this “Palace on the waters”.
In January 1797, Napoleon Bonaparte came to visit La Pliniana and he liked it to the extend that he wanted to buy it, but the impending historical events forbade him to fulfil this project. In 1818, the British poet Shelley was a guest of the villa, and in 1812, Giacomo Rossini in only three days here composed his first successful Opera Tancredi.
In 1817, the famous novelist Henry Beyle, better known as Stendhal, wrote about this villa in his storybook “Rome – Naples – Florence”. Particularly remembered is Listz’ stay at La Pliniana, and in the villa is still kept the precious spinet on which he played. But the protagonists of most romantic page lived in this mansion eight full years of love between Prince Emilio Belgiojoso and the beautiful Duchesse of Plaisance.
In 1840, after having bought the villa, Prince Belgojoso brought here the Duchesse his lover, with whom he had fled to Paris the same evening when he met her at a society ball. At the Pliniana the two lovers lived as in a fairy tale, but then as she awoke from this dream, the beautiful Duchesse left her Prince “not to suffer too much” if he would have left her in future, and she went to live at Moltrasio, on the opposite shore of the lake. The eight years the two lovers lived in complete solitude at la Pliniana, the loggia overlooking the lake... but read here what happened!