Villa Fontanelle, Villa in Moltrasio, Italy

Villa Fontanelle is a four-storey yellow-painted neoclassical building at the water's edge near Moltrasio, about 50 km from Milan. Its three acres of ornamental gardens, laid out for Gianni Versace by Roy Strong, hold three cottages, a tennis court, some 800 m of lake frontage and a private mooring. A stone balustrade with iron railing and five urn-topped pedestals runs along the terrace above the water.

A British lord had the villa built in the early 1800s after discovering Lake Como. Decades later, an Italian fashion designer purchased it and redesigned the interiors to reflect neoclassical style.

Villa Fontanelle is a private residence, not open to visitors, so its cultural life is that of the owners: Lord Charles Currie built it in the first half of the 19th century, Antonio Besana, a friend of Giuseppe Verdi, owned it later, and Gianni Versace filled it with hundreds of oil paintings. The English art historian Roy Strong laid out the gardens.

Villa Fontanelle is a private residence on the shore near Moltrasio, about 50 km from Milan; it is not open to visitors, so the gardens, cottages, tennis court and 800 m of waterfront can only be seen from the lake or the road. The estate was bought in 2008 by restaurateur Arkady Novikov, who commissioned Milanese architect Claudio Pozza to carry out restoration work.

After Versace's murder in 1997, the urn holding his ashes was first placed in a tomb in the villa's garden. The property stayed largely uninhabited until Jennifer Lopez and Cris Judd spent their honeymoon there in 2001. Russian restaurateur Arkady Novikov bought it in 2008 for 33 million euros and hired Milanese architect Claudio Pozza for restoration works.