Villa Crespi, Moorish revival villa and luxury hotel near Lake Orta, Italy

Villa Crespi is a Moorish-style building on Lake Orta with a minaret tower, stucco work, and arches that recall the architecture of North Africa. The rooms display mosaics, wood carvings, and Middle Eastern ornaments on walls and ceilings.

Cristoforo Benigno Crespi, a cotton merchant, commissioned the villa in 1879 as a summer residence and named it Villa Pia after his wife; the name remains on the side gate. Architect Angelo Colla designed the Moorish-style building, inspired by Middle Eastern architecture Crespi admired. The Crespi family owned it until 1929, after which it passed through several owners before becoming a hotel in the late 1980s.

The estate takes its name from the cotton merchant who commissioned it after his travels in the East brought him inspiration for this architecture in Piedmont. Today the property houses a restaurant that interprets regional recipes with modern techniques and draws guests from many countries.

The estate sits near Orta San Giulio and is about an hour and a half by car from Milan or Turin. It is best to plan a stay of at least two days to explore the surroundings and the lakeshore.

The tower is a minaret-like element, not a real minaret, and no source records a viewpoint open to visitors. In 1914 the villa served as a filming location for Giuseppe Pinto's film Iwna, the Ganges' Pearl (Iwna, la perla del Gange).