Private property, open for visits upon request
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Villa Maraini-Guerrieri Gonzaga is located in the territory surrounding the town of Gonzaga, in a hamlet called Palidano, a small centre on the right bank of the Pò Vecchio, and it still retains its rural character. It was built during the second half of the 18th century as a summer house for the Zanardi family. It is the formal result of an important and extensive transformation campaign of the most ancient Palidano Court, one of the most financially important Gonzaga Courts.
The villa was inherited by the Guerrieri family and the Maraini Counts; it was later acquired by a real estate company in 1998; an important restoration project was launched, that was completed in 2008.
Today the complex is an important structure that hosts events, ceremonies, conventions and meetings, surrounded by an ancient park with oaks, horse chestnuts, lime trees, beeches and plane trees. The Villa is composed of an entrance hall with a Bibiena-style bell tower, outbuildings, warehouses, the magnificent barn with seventeen arches, that was already part of the ancient court, and the main L-shaped building where one finds the large square entrance hall that offers a monumental entrance from Piazza Sordello, overlooking the well sized park, which relates tangibly to the villa with its classical decorations from the end of the 18th century, with hedges, topiary arches and glimpses of formal gardens lining the walls.
The complex is characterised by an articulate system of green spaces rising on the grounds of the green areas of the most ancient court; the large park behind the villa in particular, that forms a large rectangular area containing elements of the oldest Gonzaga orchard and the eighteenth-century garden, such as the long central tree-lined avenue, which is perfectly aligned with the main axis of the villa’s grand entrance hall; it is crossed by transversal and perimeter tree-lined avenues that divide the design into large articulate rectangular areas, beyond which there is a neo-classical temple/viewpoint standing at the end of the garden in an elliptical clearing, surrounded by a small tree grove.
(From C. Bonora Previdi, Il giardineto, l’orto e il brolo della Corte del Palidano, poi giardino di Villa Maraini-Guerrieri Gonzaga, oggi Villa Alessia, in I giardini dei Gonzaga 2018, pp. 233-237)
