Villa Ponti is situated in the old town centre of Arona, not far from the lakefront. This 18th Century villa was built on the ramparts of the Rocca by Bartolomeo Pertossi, a supporter of Napoleon I, who stayed here as a guest at the end of his Egyptian campaign. Its other claim to fame is that Gian Giacomo Ponti, a student of Thomas Edison, and professor of electronics at the Polytechnic Institute of Turin, was born and died here. The garden was altered in the 1920s and has a Baroque inspired fountain bordered by beech trees.
