Programs 2023, Villa Osio, Colico

At the end of the 19th century Cascina Folletto stood alone with its few houses grouped together in a small village, already indicated in the geographical maps of the Lario since the early 19th century. The farmhouse dominated, on one side, the final stretch of the lake towards the Pian di Spagna and the mouth of the Adda and, on the other, the poor village of Colico, mostly surrounded by unhealthy marshes in which the waters that descended stagnated, without vent, towards the lake from the dominant Monte Legnone.

The dawn of a new era of social redemption and education began for Colico when the engineer Stefano Lattuada, a Milanese superintendent of the construction of the extremely difficult section of the Bellano-Colico railway line, fell in love with Montecchio Sud and wanted to build a villa almost “with feet in the lake”, and create a farm to complement the already existing hamlet of Cascina Folletto. For the construction of the Lattuada house, he was inspired by the famous chalet built in Lausanne in 1874 by the well-known French architect Viollet-le-Duc. The villa built by Lattuada bears the date 1914 engraved under the windows, the last flower one would say of the “belle époque” in the upper Lario.

In 1917 the entire Lattuada property, which in addition to the buildings included meadows and woods for about thirty hectares, was purchased by the Stampa family, who in turn, in 1934, sold it to Umberto Osio, Paolo Stampa’s comrade in arms during the World War I.

A new life then began for this property: the breeding of the Brunalpina breed cows and the cultivation of the vineyard continued, above all the wooded area was increased with new essences but not extraneous to the Lombard and lake tradition. Numerous farmers and woodcutters were given work, the construction and running of the kindergarten of the parish of Laghetto was decisively helped, finally the music school of Villatico.

And, above all, as soon as land was put up for sale, an attempt was made to enlarge the boundaries of the property in order to avoid the dangers of building speculation, which starting in 1950 began to look at it with longing eyes.

The Osio family has thus managed to create a compact territorial entity of over fifty hectares, which has remained intact up to now, with no new buildings, a precious, if not unique, testimony to the natural beauty of the Alto Lario.