Villa De Vecchi — the 'Villa of Ghosts'

OVERVIEW

Villa De Vecchi, nicknamed the Casa Rossa for its original red colour, is a 19th-century villa at Cortenova in the province of Lecco, in the Valsassina mountains. It was built for Felice De Vecchi, a figure of the Risorgimento who commanded the Italian National Guard and fought in Milan's Five Days, to designs by the Cremonese architect Alessandro Sidoli (1812–1855); work began in 1854 and finished in 1858, after the architect's early death. Its eclectic style borrows from Moorish, Bulgarian and Romanian architecture, and De Vecchi filled it with objects from his travels.

HISTORY

The heirs abandoned the villa in 1938; displaced people lived in it during the following years, and in 1959 it was bought by the Medici di Marignano. In the early 1980s local business families took it over; meanwhile it was stripped of its furniture and vandalised. A 2012 campaign with the FAI (Italy's National Trust) gathered 250 signatures, and the owners offered to give it away, but restoration would cost about €6 million and the province has since blocked any work because of medium-to-high landslide risk from the mountain behind it. BuzzFeed's publication of photographs alongside six other 'haunted houses' made it widely known.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

Folk stories say that on the nights of the summer and winter solstice a woman's lament can be heard inside — perhaps the original owner's lover; that the house has seen unexplained suicides; and that a piano is heard playing at night in the hall where a wrecked old piano still stands. Some suppose a murder took place there. The Italian article states plainly that the rumours are unfounded: there were never any murders, mysterious deaths or satanic masses in the house. Filed UNVETTED.

VISITING

The building is derelict, unsafe and unusable; it stands by the Via Provinciale at Bindo, Cortenova. Do not enter.