La Villa Darsena Capranica available for rent

In 1903-1904 the marquise Maria Iukovsky remarried Capranica asked for and obtained permission to build a dock on her land located on the eastern shore of the Lario, in the municipality of Como, almost on the border with Blevio.

 

Less than a year later, the same owner decided to superimpose an equally small residence on that small dock. In this way one of the most imaginative residences on Lake Como was born. Fortunately, both the original idea entrusted by the architect Federico Frigerio to an accurate pen sketch and the executive project signed by the engineer Luigi Catelli survive. The two collaborated repeatedly during the first decade of the 20th century, but this is the only known case in which the engineer seems to develop and carry out an idea proposed by the architect.

 

The villa has a very simple structure, with a rectangular plan with rounded edges, surrounded towards the lake by a loggia projecting on corbels of elegant design. Above the dock, which remains perfectly usable, rises the two-storey residential block, the second of which is inserted in the high mansard roof, illuminated by dormer windows (in the original projects fewer but more elaborate than those currently existing); the rooms are connected by an internal staircase located towards the mountain.

 

The building, whose privileged relationship with the lake is evident, is well preserved, even if some of the style decorations that appear in the projects are no longer present, such as the frames of the dormer windows and the graffiti work of the mirrors between the ground floor windows.