Villa Diodati, Manor estate in Cologny, Switzerland

Villa Diodati is a three-storey mansion with a pale cream facade, a steep brown-tiled hipped roof and two chimneys. Dark green shutters flank most of the evenly spaced rectangular windows, and a balcony with a dark metal railing runs across the middle of the facade. The house stands on a grassy slope in Cologny above Lake Geneva.

Lord Byron rented the villa in 1816, and during his stay Mary Shelley drafted the manuscript of Frankenstein. An unusually cold and rainy summer that year contributed to the creation of major Gothic literary works.

Byron renamed the house Villa Diodati after the family that owned it, distant relatives of Geneva-born Italian translator Giovanni Diodati, uncle of Charles Diodati, John Milton's close friend. A plaque at the villa claims a visit by Milton in 1638, but the building was not erected until 1710, long after Milton's death. After Byron's death the house drew admirers of Byron and Romanticism; Balzac had a character in Albert Savarus (1836) call it a place visited by everybody, like Coppet and Ferney.

The villa stands on a grassy slope in Cologny and has been divided into luxury apartments since at least 2011, so it is not open to the public. Visitors can see the cream facade, green shutters and brown-tiled roof from the lane below. The site lies near the Lake Geneva shoreline and can be reached on foot from Cologny village.

A plaque at the villa announces a visit by John Milton in 1638, but the house was not built until 1710, decades after the poet's death. The claim rests on the Diodati family's link to Charles Diodati, Milton's close friend.