Villa Della Torre and the Historic Villas of Valpolicella

Villa Della Torre in Fumane: tour times and prices

Villa Della Torre stands in Fumane, which the villa gives as 20 km from the historic centre of Verona, 15 km from Lake Garda and 18 km from Verona airport. Its history page traces the present building to Giulio Della Torre, who acquired the estate when he married Anna, the only daughter of Guido Antonio Maffei, in 1504, and to their son Francesco. The design is attributed to Giulio Romano and Michele Sanmicheli, with the mascaron fireplaces by Giovan Battista Scultori, laid out on the model of an ancient Roman domus: a first courtyard, a porticoed peristyle, a fishpond, the garden and a lower grotto, with Sanmicheli's chapel at the highest point. The Mastella Allegrini family has owned the villa since 2008, and it has also been a winery since 2019.

The guided tour starts at the chapel, crosses the peristyle and the interior rooms, and ends at the lower nymphaeum. There are two scheduled tours from Monday to Friday, at 10.30 and 15.00; on Saturday tours run only by prior booking. The tour costs 20.00 EUR per person, VAT included, with a minimum of two people. A tasting of three wines (Valpolicella Classico Superiore, Amarone and Lugana) includes the tour and costs 40.00 EUR, or 60.00 EUR with cold cuts and cheeses.

Book on the villa's website, by email at [email protected] or by phone on +39 045 450 0900.

Villa Serego Alighieri at Gargagnago: Dante's descendants

Possessioni Serego Alighieri lies at Gargagnago, in the comune of Sant'Ambrogio di Valpolicella. The estate's own history begins in 1353, when Pietro Alighieri, son of Dante, bought the Casal dei Ronchi property, which remains the heart of the estate. In 1549 the Alighieri line, left with only female heirs, married into the Serego family, and the estate has been associated with the Masi group since 1973. The tourism portal gives it 120 hectares of vineyard.

A visit covers the courtyard paved in Prun stone, where 11 vines planted in 1875 still grow, the drying loft where Corvina, Rondinella and Molinara rest for a minimum of 100 days before winemaking, and the cellar with its 600-litre cherry wood barrels. The estate's own pages disagree on the family's line, giving twenty-one generations on the home page and twenty-two on the estate page.

The Possessioni Experience lasts 1.5 hours with three wines for 30.00 EUR per person; the Tradition Experience adds a fourth wine for 40.00 EUR, and a cheese pairing costs 10.00 EUR more. Visits that add the adjacent Masi cellars start at 45.00 EUR for two hours. Payment is non-refundable, and same-day visits cannot be booked online: call +39 045 7703622 or write to [email protected]. The wine shop opens Monday to Saturday from 10.00 to 19.00 and on Sundays from 10.00 to 16.00. For the village around it, see the page on the Pieve di San Giorgio on the hill above.

Villa Mosconi Bertani at Arbizzano: the Salone delle Muse

Villa Mosconi Bertani stands at Novare, near Arbizzano in the comune of Negrar. The wine road association's page dates the start of construction to around 1735, when the Fattori family built beside an existing sixteenth-century cellar; the architect Adriano Cristofali completed the complex. In 1769 the unfinished villa was sold to the Mosconi family, who added an eight-hectare romantic park in the English style with a small lake, and the poet Ippolito Pindemonte frequented its literary salon. The Bertani family bought and restored it in 1957.

Inside, the Salone delle Muse rises through all three floors and is frescoed with the Muses, trompe l'oeil architecture and the four seasons, with Flora on the ceiling. The same page states that Amarone Classico originated in the villa's cellars in 1936; this is the estate's own claim.

The estate, Tenuta Santa Maria di Gaetano Bertani, opens the cellar, the villa, the park and the gardens for guided tours and tastings from Monday afternoon to Sunday, in English and Italian. Its FAQ gives a villa tour of about 45 minutes and about 90 minutes with the tasting, two to four tours a day at fixed times, and two main tastings: Traditional, with four wines, at 29.00 EUR per person, and Selection, with six wines, at 41.00 EUR. Tour and tasting are not sold separately. Book through the estate's website or on +39 3514395473; direct bookings need no prepayment, but the estate asks for 24 hours' notice of a cancellation.

The Giardino di Pojega at Villa Rizzardi, Negrar

The Pojega estate near Negrar was bought by the Rizzardi counts in 1649, according to the villa's own site. In 1783 Count Antonio Rizzardi commissioned the architect Luigi Trezza to lay out a garden that combines the formal Italian tradition with the informal landscape garden. It covers about 54,000 square metres, with a green theatre, a temple, galleries and a belvedere over the vineyards; the original drawings are in the Biblioteca Civica di Verona. The garden reopened in 2025 after almost three years of restoration.

In 2026 the garden was open from 28 March to 8 November, from 10.00 to 18.00 with last entry at 17.00. A full ticket costs 10.00 EUR and a reduced ticket 7.00 EUR, and family rates and a season pass are also offered. Tickets are sold online on the garden's website and are valid for the chosen date with no fixed entry time. The garden suggests at least an hour for a self-guided visit; scheduled guided visits last about an hour.

The garden sits inside the Guerrieri Rizzardi wine estate, and a tasting of its Valpolicella wines, including Amarone and Ripasso, is booked separately: call +39 045 721 0028 or write to [email protected]. The tourism portal still gives the season as 1 April to 2 November; the garden's own 2026 dates are the ones to plan on, and it closes for the winter, so check the next season's dates before travelling.

Villa Santa Sofia at Pedemonte and Villa Del Bene at Volargne

Villa Santa Sofia stands at Pedemonte, in San Pietro in Cariano. The Santa Sofia winery dates Andrea Palladio's design to 1565, when Marcantonio Serego decided to renovate the estate, and states that the villa and its cellar have been on the UNESCO list since 1996 together with the other Palladian villas of the Veneto. The winery itself was founded in 1811. Its visit is a tour of the historic cellars, which it dates to the fourteenth, sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, for 10.00 EUR, plus an optional tasting: 12.00 EUR for four wines, 18.00 EUR for the second selection and 30.00 EUR for five wines including Amarone and Recioto. The tasting can be chosen and paid on the day; book through the winery on +39 045 7701074 or at [email protected].

Villa Del Bene stands at Volargne, in the comune of Dolcè, on the Adige between the Valpolicella Classica and Lake Garda. The tourism portal describes a villa built between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, declared a monument of national interest in 1926, with frescoes attributed to Domenico Brusasorzi, Nicola Crollalanza and Bernardino India and an entrance portal attributed to Sanmicheli. It opens on Sundays (the wine road association adds public holidays): from April to September from 14.00 to 19.00 (last entry 18.00) and from October to March from 14.00 to 18.00 (last entry 17.00), with booking required at least two days before, on 045 8531196. The free Valpolicella Card lowers the adult ticket from 6.00 EUR to 5.00 EUR.

Getting to the villas by bus, and planning a villa day

ATV's per-locality index shows which bus lines reach each villa's village. Fumane, for Villa Della Torre, is on line 105 only, and its winter timetable, valid from 9 November 2026, runs on weekdays. Gargagnago, for Serego Alighieri, is on line 103, which also runs on Sundays. Arbizzano is on lines 101, 103, 104, 105, 107, 108 and 21, Pedemonte on lines 101, 103, 105 and 107, and Negrar on line 104 among others. For the train and the timetables in detail, see getting to Valpolicella from Verona, and from the lake, Valpolicella from Lake Garda.

The published prices for a basic visit, in brief: the Villa Della Torre tour 20.00 EUR, the Serego Alighieri Possessioni Experience 30.00 EUR, the Mosconi Bertani Traditional tasting 29.00 EUR, the Pojega garden 10.00 EUR and the Santa Sofia cellar tour 10.00 EUR. Villa Arvedi at Cuzzano di Grezzana, in the Valpantena, 9 km from Verona, is on the wine road association's members' list, which calls it the largest villa in the province. Its own site presents it as a venue for events and weddings and publishes no visiting hours, so ask before you go.

Two villas fit in a day: Villa Della Torre in the morning and Serego Alighieri in the afternoon, for example. A tasting at each means a driver, a taxi or a guided tour; see also cycling and walking in Valpolicella.