Villa Crespi was and is a dream come true, lying on the shores of romantic Lake Orta.

Cristoforo Benigno Crespi, a  pioneer of the Italian cotton industry, while traveling on business in the Middle East was bewitched by Baghdad and its charms and in 1879 finished his own magnificent Moorish villa surrounded by a park that sloped down to the lake.
It had taken him 30 years to complete.

Originally the villa was called Villa Pia, as Mr. Crespi dedicated it to his wife, Pia Crespi.
The construction work was entrusted to the architect Angelo Colla to whom Benigno Crespi left carte blanche,  allowing him to express the very best of himself and his passion for decorative detail while highlighting the middle eastern character Crespi desired.

Over the course of time, a series of owners have held Villa Crespi, and when Marquis Fracassi of Torre Rossano acquired it in the 1930’s, it became an exclusive place for visits by poets, nobles and kings, well-known all over Northern Europe.