Amongst the hills of Lake Iseo and the vineyards of Franciacorta is located Palazzo Torri, built in the 1600s by the Federici della Corte, nobleman of Valle Camonica.
The most ancient building of the complex is dated to 1565 and it was built with garrison function. During the 1700s the ownership passed to the family Peroni from Brescia, who renoved the palace with frescoes, decorations and baroque forniture and transformed it in a so called “villa of delights”.
In 1870, the ownership changed again and passed to Alessandro and Paolina Calegari Torri who were the promoters of a “cultural gathering”, where parties, meetings, debates and literary, musical and artistic events took place.
The important guests who visited the place very often spent some time there. Among these we can enumerate writers and poets like Giosuè Carducci, Antonio Fogazzaro and Giovanni Pascoli, painters and sculptors like Francesco Michetti, Antonio Salvetti, Franz Von Lenbach, Freiherr Von Habermann, Serafino Ramazzotti and Domenico Trentacoste, composers and musicians like Paolo Chimeri and Adele Bignami Mazzucchelli, churchmen and politicians like the bishop Geremia Bonomelli (who was born in Nigoline) and the Minister Giuseppe Zanardelli, and also intellectuals, scientists, thinkers and aristocrats.
After 1995, the present owners have carried out preservation and functional adjustments with the restoration work in the palace (under the control of the Soprintendenza ai Beni Culturali ed Ambientali) providing it with modern fittings to organise parties, conferences, cultural and artistic events, with the additional possibility of sojourning in the historical residence.

The guided tour takes to know the interior and the exterior of the palace.
A path with trees leads to the courtyard of the mansion, overlooked by an impressive facade. It is very refined and sober, lacking decorations and regularly marked by columns and high arches.
On a dominating position there is an altana, datable to the end of the nineteenth century.
From the court one can observe spaces allocated for stables and coach-houses dated back to the eighteenth century or enter in a small garden with a nymphaeum, realised in mid eighteenth century.
Under the porticoes there is the entrance of the palace.
There are many rooms, some of service functions, such as the Old Well Room or the Ancient Kitchen, and some reception rooms. One can admire the Dining Room where there are mirrors with wooden gilt frames from the eighteenth century and a plate display shelf with a china collection decorated by hand by Antonia Torri Miotti, the daughter in law of Paolina Torri.
There is a Billiard Room and a Library with beautiful frescoes on the vault dated to the mid 1700s and two halls; the biggest one has decorations datable to the end of the 1800s, big Murano blown glass chandeliers and the coats of arms of Torri painted on the fireplace.
Large Sarnico stone stairs with a wrought-iron banister leading to the higher floor, where there is the Gallery with portraits of ancestors.
From here one can see some bedrooms, such as the Bishop’s Room, where usually was housed the bishop of Cremona Geremia Bonomelli, native of Nigoline and where the portrait of Paolina Calegari Torri is hanging. There is also the Red Room, characterised by a seventeenth-century lacunar ceiling, where illustrious guests like Carducci and Fogazzaro were housed during Paolina’s time.
Finally, one can admire the private apartment of Paolina.

Palazzo Torri, as it was at Paolina’s time, is a centre of cultural activities thanks to the Associazione Culturale Cortefranca.