Villa Era was built between 1884 and 1888 to a design by the Turin engineer Petitti, for Giovanni Magnani, an entrepreneur from the Valle Cervo. It did not start from nothing: the work transformed and enlarged an eighteenth-century rural building, turning it into a villa for show.
What to see
The style is neoclassical and the facade is built on strong symmetries, with tympana, cornices and columns with Doric capitals. The central body projects from the rest and, at the raised ground floor, carries an architraved portico with a frieze. It is the kind of front that asks to be seen from a distance, and indeed the villa stands on the Biella hills, looking out over the plain below.
Visiting
The villa sits in a large, elegant, well-kept park that also contains a vineyard. It remains a private residence: since 1935, when the Biella industrialist Ermanno Rivetti bought it, it has belonged to the Rivetti family, who own it still.
Our editors' tip
It is worth keeping in mind where this house comes from. Under the neoclassical dress there is a farmstead, and the man who made it grow was no nobleman: Villa Era was commissioned by an entrepreneur from the Valle Cervo and later bought by a textile industrialist, and that change of hands tells the story of the Biella country better than any pediment.