Sasso Mobile

Villa Panglossiana was devised by Professor Gaetano Conti to serve as a cultural center which would host the most famous representatives of early19th century Bolognese art and culture in exchange for getting frescoes painted on its walls and ceilings. The Villa's name recalls Pangloss, the character of Candide's tutor in the work by Voltaire, whose motto \"tout pour le mieux\"- “everything is for the best”- was adopted by Prof. Conti. Each of Conti's guests recorded an entry of his impressions of the villa in a notebook, still excellently preserved, consisting in poems, sonnets, reflections or drawings. The three-storey villa is structured around a central gallery flanked by lateral mezzanines.The surrounding park completes the eccentric vision of the professor, with a temple dedicated to Pangloss, some gothic ruins, a now ruined hermit's cave and a little garden cannon which fired a daily shot a noon thanks to an apparatus activated by sunlight. The complex also included some buildings designed as workshops which remained in use up until the 1960s.