Both the villa and the 25-acre (100,000 m2) park which surrounds it have undergone significant changes since their sixteenth-century origins as a summer residence for Cardinal Tolomeo Gallio, who had been born in the village.

In 1784, it passed to the Milanese Calderari family, who undertook a major restoration project and created a new park all’Italiana, with an impressive nymphaeum and a temple displaying a seventeenth-century[7] statue of Hercules hurling Lichas into the sea.

[9] In 1815,[9] it became the residence of Caroline of Brunswick, estranged wife of the future King George IV of the United Kingdom, who had been encouraged to live abroad.

A gala dinner held at the Villa d’Este in 1948 was the scene for the celebrated murder of the wealthy silk manufacturer Carlo Sacchi, shot dead by his lover Countess Pia Bellentani with her husband’s Fegyverzyar automatic pistol.

In September, it hosts the annual Ambrosetti Forum, an international workshop attended by prominent figures from the fields of politics, finance and business, which has taken place there since 1975.