With the arrival of the summer season and the already (more or less) vacation mood, the desire to escape from everyday life soars and finds in out-of-town trips, across the rich historical-architectural and landscape heritage of the Bel Paese, an irresistible stimulus to satisfy the urge for open air, freedom from the ordinary and, perhaps, intellectual nourishment.
The vast typology of the villa has always responded to this overlapping of desires and needs: space for living, leisure, but also literary salon, atelier, centres of agricultural estates. The variety of these vocations and the historical-artistic relevance of these buildings compose a composite panorama of architectures that today, from private space, have been opened to the public: a constellation of villas that tell stories of families, of relationship with the land and with leisure.
Domus has selected ten spectacular villas in Italy that combine their testimonial value of prestigious buildings with a vocation for culture and sociality, spaces normally (almost all) open to the public for exhibitions, shows and events, but also for entertainment initiatives: a short “hedonistic” journey among Palladian and neoclassical villas, Art Nouveau small villas and farms, to be relentlessly surprised in front of beauty.
Cover: Fausto Bontempi, Villa Caffetto, Calcinato, Brescia 1972 . Photo Matteo Multinu

Natural stone is an eternal material
Now in its 59th edition, Marmomac returns to Verona from September 23 to 26 to showcase the role of stone in contemporary design.