If you have the chance to visit the Villa del Boccaglione, in Passaggio di Bettona, usually closed, you can enjoy a rural villa from the mid-seventeenth century built on an existing building. Many are its peculiarities that make it a place of artistic and tourist interest: it seems that even the famous architect Piermarini could have taken part in his project.
Entering the courtyard, the large three-storey main building of the villa dominates with its double staircase, and to the left a small church, totally propped and inaccessible, dating back to the second half of the century. XVII, connected with a hanging passage to the noble floor of the residence.
Two gardens, one French and one Italian (whose primitive beauty can only be imagined) soften the exterior of the villa, the back of which is lightened by a portico that alternates between arches and lintels.
Frescoed rooms follow one another, mythological scenes, musical instruments, grotesque motifs can be admired on the ceilings made of camorcanna, on the painted beams, on the walls of the rooms once once sumptuous, valuable stuccos on the richly decored fireplaces, while it still seems to feel, walking along the entrance corridor on the ground floor, the noise of the carriages making their entrance and then directly reach the stables and sheds.
Visiting this place the impression of entering a still image, where the restoration, consolidation and adaptation works began and then suddenly they were inexorably interrupted. Very questionable interventions hurt the eyes and the heart, while the internal decorations, ruined by time and neglect, slowly fade. In the gardens, the boxwood planted in the 90s and then never cared for is now dry, topped with infested herbs more than a meter high.
Despite this, the villa expresses all its beauty and potential, as witnessed by the visitors, who flocked in thousands, on the first day of its reopening for the Bettona Art-Music Festival.
Benedetta Tintillini
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