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The other buildings include Villa Moscardo, which dates back
to the fifteenth century, on the facade of which there is a
plaque to commemorate the visit of Emperor Charles V on the
21st of April 1530. Then there are the guest quarters and
stables, a stately conservatory made of wrought iron dating
back to the second half of the nineteenth-century, and three
caretaker's lodges, the most important of which is in
neo-Gothic style. Other famous people stayed in the Villa
dei Cedri.
In fact, in September 1943, after the armistice, Villa dei
Cedri became the German general headquarters for the North
of Italy under Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, while the
headquarters of the South of Italy under Field Marshal
Kesserling were in Rome. The Moscardo family, who bought the
estate from the Sansebastiani towards the middle of the
eighteenth century, are probably responsible for the form
and design of the park. The work was continued and completed
by Miniscalchi Erizzo, who owned the park from the end of
the eighteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth
century: the distinctive traits are Arcadian -
eighteenth-century, with an airy development of paths and
open spaces typical of the gardens of the
nineteenth-century. The Miniscalchi were a famous family,
related to a Venetian doge. They owned a monumental palace
in the piazza delle Erbe in Verona, and built the Villa dei
Cedri in a neoclassical style.
In a rare photo album of Richard Lotze from 1860, which is
kept in the Miniscalchi museum in Verona, there are some
images of the park, the floristic wealth of which has
remained untouched by time. One hundred and fifty cedar
trees (Cedrus atlantica, C. atlantica "Glauca", C. deodara)
and Abies alba, nordmannica, Pinus nigra, P. excelsa, Fragus
sylvatica, P. "Purpurea Pendula", Liquidambar styraciflua,
Taxus baccata and T. bacctla "Frastigiata") are just some of
the species that can be found in the park. Before the main
facade of the Villa dei Cedri the view of the lawn is framed
by a wood of holm-oaks, just a few trees but with such an
extension that on the ground below a sort of paving was laid
for dances. A short distance away, a strawberry tree of
impressive dimensions stands. It has long lost any
similarity to a bush, and looks like some kind of
prehistoric animal with a reddish hide.
When the park was created, the territory had the form of a
vast basin, crossed in the centre by a torrent. The
morphology of the place could have been designed to hold a
stretch of water, which was the first element in the
conception of the eighteenth-century garden. A plaque dating
back to 1725, with Latin solemnity, tells the tragic story
of two small children who drowned in the lake. This, along
with local tales to the same effect, shows that the lake
existed at that time, with the torrent diverted by pilings
to fill the same. A stream flowed out of the lake, to return
to the same torrent. This was so until a few years ago
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What happened in 1989?
The new owners, the Villa dei Cedri S.p.A.
company, managed by Vittorio Nalin, decided to
dig a well to develop the irrigation system of
the vast park. |
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At a depth of 160 metres, the surprise: a hot water table,
light, low in mineral content, rich in bicarbonate, calcium,
magnesium, lithium, and silica (an important element in the
prevention of arteriosclerosis).
The company had a brilliant idea: to replace the water in
the lake (roughly 5,000 m2) with the hot water that flowed
out of the bowels of the earth at a temperature of 37
degrees, using pumps to guarantee an exchange of 3,500 cubic
metres of water per day, equal to half the content of the
lake.
Under the gravel on the bottom there is a network of roughly
6 kilometres of pipes, with 1,400 injectors, that carry the
thermal water to all the points of the lake so the
temperature is uniform everywhere.
After flowing out of the lake into the stream, the water,
which has cooled along the way, is used to irrigate the
surrounding countryside and the park. It has proved
excellent for producing healthy plants and crops.
But the surprises of this thermal lake don't end here.
The grotto, built at the same time as the lake as a
decorative element, is a real palace of pleasure: a triumph
of hydromassage, with a variety of jets of water, from above
for the back and neck, from below for the feet and fingers,
and from above in a light, rain-like drizzle for the face.
There are waterfalls and jets of hot water everywhere, along
the edges of the lake. You're surrounded by the joyous
sounds of water, gurgling and splashing, like the people
playing and laughing in the water, or on the lawn before
stopping for a picnic under the ancient cedar trees. You can
relax on the comfortable, wood sunbeds, sinking into the
white canvas.
The sun touches the tops of the two-hundred-year -old
sequoias, the small wood of Taxodium distichum on the
island, turning the lawn a deep shade of reddish-brown.
It's not a traditional health spa; you won't find that
hushed and protective, if somewhat sad atmosphere. It's
nothing to do with those places, which can be relaxing but
also bleak, giving you the idea that you have to find your
wellbeing, heal you body and spirit, search for a state of
health that's somehow lost.
The "Paradeisos", the mythical walled garden, separate from
the world, is complete: an evergreen existence, with the
plants that seem to project it into a timeless dimension. An
age of geological mystery, almost forgotten.
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