Villa Rinchiosta, which began as a hunting lodge, was transformed into a villa at the behest of Teresa Pamphili, who had arrived from Rome to marry Charles II Cybo Malaspina. In 1675 she commissioned the work from the court architect Alessandro Bergamini, who re-proposed the ‘family language’ already seen in the Ducal Palace of Massa. The project aimed at creating not so much a palazzo for official receptions as a building for private use, and this is made more evident by the presence of not one but two faҫades, intended to satisfy the client’s personal taste rather than court etiquette. 

The villa was surrounded by a large garden divided up with box-wood hedges and adorned with flowers, arboreal essences and a citrus-fruit orchard with lemon, bitter orange and citrus trees. Alderano I, the son of Teresa Pamphili, and his wife Ricciarda Gonzaga, transformed the villa into a sumptuous home and embellished the garden with geometric paths, vases, marble statues and busts.

The first land registry map from 1826 shows the garden structured into four large flower-beds crossed by perpendicular paths with a large pond in the centre. Two paths lead from the sides of the semi-circular forecourt in front of the villa, one to the stables and one to the estate entrance. This scheme is thought to coincide with the one chosen by Alderano I and Ricciarda. But already in 1722 removal of the statues began; it was the beginning of a period of decline, accentuated by Napoleon’s occupation of Massa, during which the whole of the marble furnishings risked being plundered.