Last week on my blog, I introduced you to Lake Como, the main setting for my new novel, Concerto. Part of the charm of Lake Como is the many beautiful villas that have been built on its shores – grand, impressive dwellings constructed for the wealthy and influential in times gone by.

One of the most notable villas – and an inspiration for Villa Monteverdi, home of the composer Umberto in my book – is Villa Carlotta in Tremezzo.

It was built in the 1740s by the Clerici family, a grand country estate with terraced gardens featuring sculptures and fountains. It was subsequently sold in 1801 to politician Giovanni Battista Sommariva, an avid art collector who brought beauty to the villa, filling it with commissioned artworks by the likes of Canova, Thorvaldsen and Hayez and bringing a romantic English influence to the gardens. Under Sommariva’s ownership, the art collection and garden made the villa a popular stop on the European Grand Tour.

In 1847, Villa Sommariva became Villa Carlotta, when Princess Marianne, wife of Prince Albert of Prussia, bought the villa as a wedding gift for her daughter, Charlotte, and her husband, Georg II of Saxen-Meiningen. Sadly, Charlotte had only a few years in her beautiful lakeside home before she died in childbirth. Her husband, Duke Georg, however continued to visit the villa, as did the composer Johannes Brahms, of whom Georg was patron. The Duke left his legacy at Villa Carlotta in the gardens, where he introduced all sorts of new plants from around the world. At the start of World War I, the Duke died, and in recognition that the villa was a national treasure, a charitable foundation was established to run the property.

Today, the villa is open to the public and attracts many thousands of visitors each year. The villa itself is an art museum, and its collection is impressive. On display is a dazzling array of fine art, from sculptures by Antonio Canova, like Palamedes and The Muse Terpsichore, and Eros and Psyche by Adamo Tadolini, to oil paintings like The Last Adieu of Romeo and Juliet by Francesco Hayez. For me, most impressive of all is The Entrance of Alexander the Great in Babylonia by Bertel Thorvaldsen, a frieze that comprises no less than 33 slabs of marble.

But visitors do not come to Villa Carlotta only for the art, but also to explore the eight-hectare botanical garden. There is so much to see here. A theatre of greenery, a bamboo garden, a valley of ferns, a rock garden. Plane trees and camellias and azaleas and rhododendrons. Statues and balustrades and steps; waterfalls and fountains. And beyond it all, the eye is constantly drawn to the sweeping waters of the lake.

The following video, by the Artway Tremezzina initiative, gives a wonderful sense of the position of Villa Carlotta on the lake, and of its stunning gardens and architecture.

The French writer Stendhal described Lake Como as an ‘enchanting spot, unequalled on earth in its loveliness’. I hope you can see why I chose to set my new novel here, at a lakeside villa. Where better for an impassioned Italian composer to find his way back to his art – and to love?