Villa Bernasconi is a new idea of a museum that emotionally involves the visitor, transforming him into a "guest" and exceptionally, given the health emergency, into a "story thief". The Museum is a welcoming cultural place, with a strong reference to the first vocation and intended use of the villa, a home, and unconventional, which updates the relationship between past and present, transmitting messages of innovation and dynamism. In fact, with the support of technological and design solutions, it is the villa itself that tells its story and leads visitors, like guests, to discover its history and get to know the people who lived there, starting from 1906 – the year in which its construction has been completed – to this day. Not a museum in the traditional sense of the term, but an experience made of suggestions and connections guided by #vocidivilla: an innovative and interactive journey through multimedia content, objects and historical documents on loan from other museum and private collections. Villa Bernasconi, one of the rare examples of Art Nouveau architecture on Lake Como and the only villa in Cernobbio open to the public, was built between 1905 and 1906 based on a design by the architect Alfredo Campanini as a "fashionable house" for the engineer Davide Bernasconi who, of Milanese origin, founded the homonymous Tessiture Seriche in Cernobbio at the end of the 19th century. It is a symbolic and very important place for the history of the city of Cernobbio. The reference to the owner's entrepreneurial activity can be found not only in the external decorations of the Villa, which reproduce the life cycle of the silkworm and the fruits of the mulberry plant, unique in the Art Nouveau panorama, but also in the location of the building itself. The villa is in fact located inside the so-called "silk citadel" of Cernobbio, among what were the administrative offices of the Bernasconi Silk Fabrics (currently the Library and the Middle School), the houses built for the workers, the paintings and managers, as well as the kindergarten (still active) designed by Davide Bernasconi himself. The architectural project of Villa Bernasconi eschews any symmetry and experiments with soft, free and dynamic forms; the ornamental apparatus not only enriches the construction, but integrates with it and constitutes its living part. Its total and unitary design and the artistic value of the decorations are typical characteristics of this style, which here, thanks also to the presence of the national master of wrought iron, Alessandro Mazzucotelli, achieve one of the most significant results in Italy. The villa remained the property of the Bernasconi heirs until 1955 when it was sold to CET – then Società Autovie Lariane Valle Intelvi (SALVI) – which rented it to the Guardia di Finanza until its purchase by the Municipality of Cernobbio in 1989. It hosted temporarily the municipal offices (late 1990s), and was later home to temporary exhibitions and cultural events. After a long and important restoration and renovation project, which lasted from 2005 to 2013 and financed with public and private funds, on 26 November 2017 it was definitively reopened to the public thanks to the "Liberty Tutti" project as a museum. It is included in the Liberty itinerary in Lombardy and in the Art Nouveau European Route.