It was the custom for city nobles to own a property in the countryside where they would spend the summer months. Sometimes these were agricultural properties passed down from generation to generation, other times they were the results of shrewd investments. In the second half of the 18th century, Ignazio Bernardo De Laugier bought one such agricultural property in the Berroni area in Racconigi where he began to build a villa with two large enclosed courtyard farmhouses.

Baron De Laugier was probably also drawn to Racconigi by the return of the Princes of Carignano who had commenced works designed to embellish the Castello Reale. The fact that the two residences are related is evident: first Ignazio had the main hall decorated by the plasterers working on the Savoy construction sites; then, the subsequent owners, the Counts of Bertalazone, Arache and Banna, commissioned the gardener of Princess Giuseppina of Carignano to design their park.

In the mid-19th century, banker Carlo Ceriana Mayneri took over the debts of the Varzi castellans and bought the estate. The house was last transformed by the younger son Michele. When he was one of the partners of FIAT and Mayor of Racconigi, he entrusted his brother-in-law Carlo Ceppi, an architect known for the construction of the Porta Nuova station in Turin, with the task of embellishing the villa.

His daughter Emilia, wife of war hero Alessandro Castelbarco Visconti Simonetta, inherited the estate. Remaining in the female branch of the family, it was passed down to Countess Alessandra. As she often says, it was her three children who convinced her to make Racconigi their home.

Today two of them look after the villa with their mother, an exclusive location for events, periodically open to the public for guided tours, and take care of the farm. Medicinal herbs are grown in the fields surrounding the house and a range of quality products are made from the cows’ milk: milk, yogurt, ice cream, creams, sweets. The sales point at the villa has also become a showcase for other typical products of the area.