Villa Gandini, which in Formigine many still call Villa Aggazzotti after the last family that owned it, is a neoclassical villa and one of the more than eighty villas and historic residences of the area. The Gandini counts, a Modena family tied to the court of the Este dukes, came into possession of it in 1791. It was Pietro Gandini, a cultivated patron and collector, who entrusted its enlargement to Francesco Vandelli, the architect of the ducal court known for the new Teatro Comunale of Modena, opened in 1841. In the sixties of the twentieth century the Aggazzotti modernised the structure and the garden; then the town council bought the villa to make it the municipal library, named after Daria Bertolani Marchetti.
What to see
On entering you find a double-height atrium, entirely frescoed in neoclassical style, with an elliptical opening in the vault, carried by four columns finished in scagliola imitating marble. It is enriched by four canvases with scenes from the Old Testament, painted in the mid-nineteenth century by Domenico Barone, a pupil of Adeodato Malatesta. In the hall of honour are two bas-reliefs attributed to the sculptor Luigi Mainoni.
The historic garden was laid out in the seventies of the nineteenth century by Count Luigi Alberto Gandini, a keen botanist: to him are owed the three small lakes, one of them beside large specimens of Ginkgo biloba. Today it is part of the larger Parco della Resistenza. Beside the villa remain the old outbuildings, with the stables and the stores, the steward's house and the barchessa.
Visiting
The villa is the municipal library: to go in, its opening hours apply, to be checked with the town council of Formigine. The outbuildings house the children's library, a café and a space for young people; in the barchessa is the environmental education centre «Il Picchio».
Our editors' tip
The library bears the name of a scholar who had to do with this garden: Daria Bertolani Marchetti, a botanist and palynologist from Formigine, formerly director of the Botanical Garden of Modena, oversaw its rearrangement in the English landscape manner.
