page_title: Bellagio, Lombardy
section_title: The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
hierarchical_section_title: Bellagio, Lombardy / History / The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Antonio Nessi (1834-1907) - "Veduta di Bellagio - Lago di Como". English: Antonio Nessi (1834-1907) - "View of Bellagio - Lake Como".
context_page_description: Bellagio is a comune in the Province of Como in the Italian region of Lombardy. It is located on Lake Como, also known by its Latin-derived name Lario, whose arms form an inverted Y. The triangular land mass at the base of the inverted Y is the Larian Triangle: at its northern point sits Bellagio, looking across to the northern arm of the lake and, behind it, the Alps. It has always been famous for its location. It belongs to a mountain community named Comunità montana del Triangolo lariano, with base in Canzo.
context_section_description: During the brief Napoleonic period, the port of Bellagio assumed military and strategic importance. A decision, apparently of secondary importance, was to guide the destiny of Bellagio for the two succeeding two centuries: the decision of Count Francesco Melzi d'Eril, Duke of Lodi and Vice President of the Cisalpine Republic to establish here his summer home. Count Melzi proceeded to build on the west bank near Loppia a magnificent villa. That brought to the area the flower of the Milanese nobility and the promontory was transformed into a most elegant and refined court. Roads suitable for carriages were built, first of all to link the villas and the palaces and then towards the town centre; finally the provincial road Erba–Bellagio was completed.
  The fame of the lakeside town became well known outside the borders of the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia: even the Emperor Francis I of Austria visited in 1816 and returned in 1825 to stay in the Villas Serbelloni, Trotti and Melzi.
  The Romantic discovery of landscape was changing how the Italian lakes were seen. Stendhal had first visited in 1810:
  What can one say about Lake Maggiore, about the Borromean Islands, about Lake Como, unless it be that one pities those who are not madly in love with them … the sky is pure, the air mild, and one recognises the land beloved of the gods, the happy land that neither barbarous invasions nor civil discords could deprive of its heaven-sent blessings.
  At Bellagio he was the guest of the Melzi d’Eril, from whose villa he wrote:
  I isolate myself in a room on the second floor; there, I lift my gaze to the most beautiful view in the world, after the Gulf of Naples …
  Franz Liszt and his mistress Comtesse Marie d'Agoult stayed for four months of 1837 on their way from Switzerland to Como and Milan. In Bellagio he wrote many of the piano pieces which became Album d'un voyageur (1835–38), landscapes seen through the eyes of Byron and Senancour. These works contributed much to the image of Bellagio and the lake as a site of Romantic feeling. D'Agoult's letters show they were sadly aware of drawing an age of motorised tourism in their train.
  In 1838, Bellagio received with all honours the Emperor Ferdinand I, the Archduke Rainer and the Minister Metternich, who came from Varenna on the Lario, the first steamboat on the lake, launched in 1826. Bellagio was one of the localities most frequented by the Lombardy nobility and saw the construction of villas and gardens. Luxury shops opened in the village and tourists crowded onto the lakeshore drive. Space was not sufficient and it was decided to cover the old port which came up as far as the arcade in order to construct a large square.
  Gustav Flaubert visited Bellagio in 1845. He told his travel diary:
  One could live and die here. The outlook seems designed as a balm to the eyes. … the horizon is lined with snow and the foreground alternates between the graceful and the rugged — a truly Shakespearean landcape, all the forces of nature are brought together, with an overwhelming sense of vastness.
caption: Bellagio in late 19th century.
exif: {}