It is extremely rare to find in Piedmont, in the ancient Monferrato, an historic villa dating back to the eighteenth century, that preserves, as The Marchesa Estate, an intact lanscapes of 188 acres including the 150 acres of vineyards of Gavi, the great white Piemontese, Monferrato Rosso and Albarossa, the fruit garden, the Italian garden, the water garden with lotus flowers in the lake.
The Marchesa Estate, the name with which from 1700 the estate is mentioned in pastoral visits and wills, recalls the great properties of the Genoese aristocracy, which were located in the ancient road that connected Genoa to Novi Ligure, a branch of the so called “Francigena street” that brought the pilgrims to embark in Genoa for the trip to Rome or even to Jerusalem.
In Novi Ligure, the great Genoese bankers, like the Marquises Sauli, the ancient owners of The Estate, owned a palace in which they moved 4 times a year for the “Exchange Fairs”, real trade fairs for barter, in which the balances were settled in cash by bankers.
But Novi Ligure was also part of the Monferrato, the small state wedged between Piedmont, Liguria and Lombardy. A state “supersnob” so much to be called “the state of the two emperors”, as the first dynasty, the Alerami, was born in 900 AD from a marriage with the daughter of Emperor Otto and the following, the Paleologues, descended direct line from the emperors of Constantinople.
The Marchesa concert hall, of 200 square meters, can host up to 130 people and guarantees perfect acoustics.