Private property
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Surrounded by cultivated fields and agricultural settlements, the villa today has an exterior appearance that belies its ancient origins, the result of an intervention in the early 1900s. Above all, the long terraces of the front and rear facades, one overlooking the main courtyard and the other the garden, break the harmonious relationship between the loggia and the upper windows and create a deceptive effect of a twentieth-century building. The extraordinary decorations, which are still partly hidden under the plaster, bring us back to the building’s origins, together with the perfect symmetry and geometric ratios of the interior distribution. Only the main hall has lost part of its grandeur with the realization of a floor that splits its height into two levels.
It is the business centre of a large agricultural estate that first belonged to the Gonzaga family, then the Guerrieri (of which remain the coat of arms on the ancient stables next to the residence), then to the Buris and finally to the Zanotti family, La Motta also included the neighbouring Corte Vecchia and Corte Nuova.
You enter the villa through a main courtyard with a flowerbed in the middle against the double ramp of the stairs that lead to the entrance loggia, around which there are an orderly number of buildings: the stables, the greenhouse behind, the 'Bugadera', the well and some service homes.
The large back garden, once completely surrounded by the moat, also used as a fish pond, occupies an area of 12 biolche [TN: local surface measure] and today is landscaped. In front of the loggia a wide and luminous central meadow area opens up, entered through two great paulownias and various ornamental species (Magnolia grandiflora, Liriodendron tulipifera and a beautiful Corylus colurna or Constantinople hazelnut), while a series of mixed groves rich in yews, shadow dales and hillocks arranged at the edge of the area. A large glacier is hidden beneath a bamboo shield and, hidden in the vegetation, imposing spectacular centuries-old trees survive: a giant Celtis australis, a large fig with numerous branches and a leafy hazel, plus three enormous yews in the main courtyard.
(Taken from Marida Brignani, in the gardens of the Gonzaga..., 2017)