Three kilometres of avenue, forty-seven coats of arms and a man who wanted to rival Tivoli.
“Welcome, guest. I am the President's Secretary: I write the letters of Bartolomeo III Arese, President of the Senate of Milan since 1660, and I do the honours of the house. With a pinch of propaganda, I admit.”The President's Secretary
What the narrator asks you. The answer, and the true fact behind it, is for you to find on the spot.
The President builds palaces, but this tower was already here before him. It has seen walls, moats and vendettas. Look up: its little windows have a strange shape, and they tell you what it was for.
The Arese were two branches of one family, and inheritance quarrels ended in ingenious contracts. The cousin built his house a few steps away, with two turrets that look like a castle.
The President hunted where the plain became heathland. That landscape survived thanks to a park. Its name is a dialect word that is no longer used today.
The palace's furnishings left for an island on Lake Maggiore. In the oratory, a photograph stands in for the painting.