Villa Sorra, Baroque villa in Gaggio, Italy

Villa Sorra stands at the centre of its estate in the Gaggio locality north of Castelfranco Emilia. The main block has a square plan topped by a belvedere; an original hexagonal turret was demolished after the war. The 18th-century garden was remade in the English romantic style in the 19th century.

From the second half of the 17th century Francesco Sorra, a Modena merchant, bought land at Gaggio and Panzano, on the border between the Papal State and the Este duchy. In the early 18th century Count Antonio Sorra commissioned the villa from Giuseppe Antonio Torri. The garden, laid out in the 18th century, was turned into an English-style romantic garden in the 19th century for marchioness Ippolita Levizzani. Damaged in the 2012 earthquake, it was restored by December 2013.

The villa's name comes from Count Antonio Sorra, who commissioned it from Giuseppe Antonio Torri in the early 18th century. The estate later passed to Cristoforo Munarini-Sorra, whose wife, Marchioness Ippolita Levizzani, had the 18th-century garden remade in the English romantic style in the 19th century. The villa holds the Raccolta della vita contadina, a collection of 9,000 rural-life objects donated by the painter and antiquarian Celestino Simonini in the 1970s.

The villa itself is not accessible and has not been visitable for years, so plan to view it from outside; the estate lies at Via Prati 50 in the Gaggio locality, north of Castelfranco Emilia. The 2012 Emilia earthquake left the building damaged, and restoration work on the complex was completed in December 2013.

Villa Sorra served as a set for Pier Paolo Pasolini's last film, Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (1975). The estate also houses the Raccolta della vita contadina, a collection of rural life donated by the painter-antiquarian Celestino Simonini in the 1970s, now grown to 9,000 items.