VILLA PONTI
(ARONA)

A splendid 18th-century villa, located in the old town centre of Arona, not far from the lakefront. The edifice was built on the ramparts of the Rocca by Bartolomeo Pertossi, a wealthy merchant of Flemish origins and supporter of Napoleon I, who stayed here as a guest at the end of his Egyptian campaign. Gian Giacomo Ponti, a student of Thomas Edison, as well as professor of electronics at the Polytechnic Institute of Turin, industrialist and promoter of the Stipel group after the war, was born and died here. The garden, redesigned in the 1920s, boasts a fountain inspired by baroque models encircled by beech trees and silver cedars while magnolias and typical lacustrine vegetation surrounds the house.

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