The historic villa of Ferlaro. In 1819, at its imperial height, the property belonged to Napolean Bonaparte’s wife, Maria Luigia D’Austria Duchess of Parma. The estate of Villa del Ferlaro, one gains entrance through an automatic iron gate, which leads you down a large driveway with access from the main road. Following along a tree-lined avenue and passing over Valline beck, you find yourself on a road that takes you across a monumental park with the Villa straight ahead. This comes in three distinct blocks, but never the less connected to each other.
The main block to the east, goes up by three floors above ground level over an underground floor that makes up only a part of the building’s layout. On the ground floor, the daytime area is arranged with kitchen, dining rooms, a library and a wide staircase that leads to the first floor where one finds bedrooms equipped with bathrooms and wardrobes. On the second floor, accessed by an iron spiral staircase, space is made for an extensive home cinema along with guest rooms and their facilities. In the underground, utility rooms are located along with an ironing facility. All the floors are connected by a lift and the building’s roof is made of wood, covered by tiles. The central part is connected to the ground floor of the east block by a wide hallway lined with stain glass windows, elevated in two floors above ground level, in addition to the basement. The whole southern side is lined with porticos. On the ground floor, is a large bar-room with a fireplace. This lies adjacent to a billiard room of which begins a staircase, leading to the first floor where one finds a large room for conferences and court-like theatre shows. From this room there is a large terrace that just so happens to be the west block’s roof. A wide vehicular hallway connects the central part to the west block. The latter is made up of just one floor above ground level, in which one finds space for three little habitable units for service staff. Along with this, is a semi-basement floor completely above ground level and accessible to the western side in which utility rooms are located.
The surfaces in the internal layout of the building is 1260 sq m (including porticoes). The entire surfaces of the various floors bring to a whole surface of about 4000 sq m subdivided as so underground and basement 720m sq m− habitable surfaces ground floor, first and second 2275 sq m − Second floor (semi-habitable part) 360 sq m − Porticoes and ground floor hallways 155 sq m− First-floor terraces 460 sq m. Between the Villa and the wood of conifers positioned to the south-west, is a recently built swimming pool of about 250m sq surface, coated in ceramic mosaic tiles with marble trim “uber-white”.
The Ferlaro estate in its entirety has. 17.36.88 (equal to 56,37 parmesan hectares) of which has. 05.85.50 situated in the commune of Collecchio and has. 11.51.38 located in the commune of Sala Baganza. The villa and the park to the north still fall within the boundaries of Collecchio, while the meadowland to the south with the swimming pool and wooded area to the west of the Monobiola beck, fall in the commune of Sala Baganza. In the original part of the park and in the proximity of the Villa, horse-chestnuts, cedars, (in various types), read white fir trees, bald cypress and black nuts are present. In the remaining part of the park, in accordance to a group arrangement and without precise order, are found: rustic maple trees, hornbeams, horse-chestnuts, lime trees, beach trees, badger burrows and random vegetation. In the last part, to the north, the planting of conifers is prevalent in which white firs take precedence.
The wide meadowland to the south of the Villa is marked-off to the East by a wooded strip parallel to the Valline beck, made of nuts and false acacias; and to the west by a little wood made up mostly of black pines and cedars.The wooded part over the Monobiola beck is characterised all along thesouthern perimeter, by a wide road lined with centuries-old Lebanese cedars, connecting the Ferlaro Villa to the Casino Dei Boschi, best known as “Cedar Way”. For the remaining part, the wood is presented in two different aspects: the first part, adjacentto cedar way, is occupied by a plantation of towering pines, while the remaining part is a cedar wood of turkey oak. Beyond that, other qualities of random plants are present such as elms, poplars, false-acacias, ashes and various shrubs.The wooded park of Carrega is populated by various species of wild animals within which one finds: goats, boars, badgers, foxes, porcupines, hares, pheasants, partridges, buzzards and kestrels, woodpeckers and diverse qualities of corvids and minor birds. The parkof Villa Ferlaro is the natural home of goats, hares and pheasants.
