The villa was built in the second half of the sixteenth century, designed by Pellegrini for Cardinal Tolomeo Gallio, powerful secretary of state to Pope Gregory XIII. The early nineteenth century villa and park were purchased by the Marquis Calderara, which left them dying wife Victoria Peluso. The widow then married Count Domenico Pino, general and minister of Napoleon, for which he built in the park of the curious developments like fortresses in ruins, to remedy the current fashion of a passionate romance architectural revivals of neo-medieval style. The famous name of Villa d'Este was the ancient home of Gallium imposed only when it was purchased in 1815 by Brunswick-Wolfenbiittell Carolina, wife of George Frederick Prince of Wales, later George IV of England. The lady loved it believed distant descendant of the Este family, the lineage that the ancient lords of Ferrara. From Carolina Villa Torlonia passed to the transmitted almost immediately to the Orsini. It was then purchased in 1833 by Baron Ippolito Ciani, rich and educated patriot, servant of Cavour, who held the center of political activities in those difficult years and fervent, until 1868. Lived there for two years, returning to a brief but intense moment of worldliness, Empress Fedorowna, mother of Tsar Alexander II. But in 1873 the owners, thought to transform Villa d'Este in that hotel luxury that today it is among the world's most famous.