On the edge of the road leading out of Villa Estense — a small agricultural comune in the Bassa Padovana, the flat southern strip of the Province of Padua wedged between the Euganean Hills and the river Adige — there is a two-storey house that barely announces itself. Creepers have swallowed much of the façade. Weeds press against the ground-floor windows. What stops you, if you happen to be passing, are the figures: painted faces peering from the walls, ceramic animals arranged near the entrance, the stub of a sculptural arm emerging from the undergrowth. This is the house where Alice Nelly Bergamini and her brother Nellino Bergamini spent the second half of their lives making art in near-total isolation, without electricity, gas or running water — a self-enclosed world that survived its inhabitants by decades and has since slowly come apart.
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Historical Context
Alice and Nellino were born in Berra, in the Province of Ferrara — Alice in 1922, Nellino in 1925. The family moved to Villa Estense in 1946, following the death of their father, who had been working as an electrician and was killed by electrocution on a high-voltage cable. The accident left a lasting mark on the family: according to multiple accounts, the siblings refused to connect the house to the electrical grid for the rest of their lives, living instead by kerosene lanterns and receiving news through a battery-powered radio. Their father had read them fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm during childhood, a detail that would eventually shape everything about the house.
Both Alice and Nellino trained and worked as primary school teachers. Their mother, a widow, settled with them in Villa Estense. According to local accounts, Nellino continued to do substitute teaching for some time, riding his bicycle to class because he didn’t trust leaving it unattended in the schoolyard. His sister retired earlier to care for their ailing mother.
The turn toward total withdrawal came in the 1960s. The Province of Padua initiated works to rectify the provincial road leading to Vighizzolo, and the curve that passed directly in front of the Bergamini house required an expropriation of part of their land. The episode affected Nellino severely. The Carabinieri from Carmignano were called; he reportedly spent several days in a security room in Este. From that point, the two siblings withdrew from public life almost entirely. They stopped socialising with the inhabitants of the village, grew their own food in the garden, raised chickens and hens, and funded what little they needed — mainly paints — through the sale of their artworks at the local market in Villa Estense, where Nellino would go to trade.
Their life was materially reduced to almost nothing: no running water (there are no sinks or toilets in the house), no electricity, no gas. And yet, within those constraints, they built something. Alice Nelly — that was how she signed her paintings, using her full double name — covered the interior walls with fairy tale scenes, flowers, portraits and decorative motifs. Nellino sculpted in the garden. The division appears to have been consistent: she painted, he sculpted. Together, they created what visitors and locals would come to call the Casa delle Favole — the Fairy Tale House.
Nellino reportedly called his sister “the Divine” — la Divina — and never referred to her by name. Their mother, throughout her life, had hoped both of her children would marry; in the garden, among the statues, there is a couple depicted embracing, which some interpret as an expression of that wish: two figures, close and together even in the sculpture’s rendering of time.
In 2007, Alice died. She was buried, according to local accounts, wearing python fur and shoes. After her death, Nellino left the house and spent his remaining years in two care homes — the last in Casale di Scodosia — where he spoke daily about his sister. Before leaving the house, or in the period immediately following her death, he is said to have built a pair of cherubs and a bust of Alice, which were placed in the chapel of the municipal cemetery of Villa Estense to guard her tomb. A small statue inside the house, showing a woman with her gaze cast downward, is believed to represent Alice and was likely made by Nellino after her death.
Architecture and Space
The house is a modest two-storey rural dwelling, typical of the Paduan plain: no architectural distinction from the outside, no heritage classification, no documented construction date in available records. What is architecturally exceptional — or more precisely, what is spatially exceptional — is what was done to it from the inside out.
The interior surfaces are densely painted from floor to ceiling. Fairy tale characters, stylised portraits, decorative borders, lettering and figurative scenes fill every room. On an upper floor, a painted bouquet is accompanied by the words “Solo per la Mamma” — Only for Mum — a dedication to their mother. The paintings are unsigned in the conventional sense; Alice signed her works “Alice Nelly,” combining her first and middle names, while Nellino signed his sculptures simply “Bergamini.”
The garden is equally worked: pedestals hold ceramic and sculpted figures arranged in deliberate groupings, figures in period costume, characters from specific stories. The two televisions found inside the house — objects that carry a particular ambiguity given the household had no electricity — have painted portraits on their screens: tributes to Katia Ricciarelli and Luciano Pavarotti, whose voices the siblings likely knew from radio broadcasts. They are among the most cited objects in the house, because they condense something essential about the Bergaminis’ relationship to the world: they did not need a functioning screen to celebrate what they admired.
Legends
The Orc Brothers
Because of their strange way of life, there are many rumours about these two brothers. Some speak of an enchanted garden that enchanted and attracted children, who were in turn captured, killed and eaten. It is also believed that the remains were buried in a pit at the back of the garden.
The Parents
The second legend concerns the brothers’ father, who was believed to have been a spy for the Germans during the Second World War. After the liberation by the Allies and the partisans, he decided to take refuge in this country house, where he died a few years later. The reality is that his father was electrocuted while working with high voltage cables (this incident traumatised the family so much that they decided to live without electricity) and they lived in this house with just their mother.
A mother who was very close to her children, the children dedicated to her a bouquet painted in one of the upper rooms with the words “Only for Mum”. The mother always lived with the wish that Nelly and Alice would get married. Perhaps this is why in the garden, among the various creepers and trees, we find a couple kissing, representing the two brothers close and together even in death.
Once upon a time…
The first thought that crosses your mind after entering this fairy tale world is that you have ended up in some kind of museum. The trees and grass that grow wild and lush are part of this imaginative world full of melodies.
The statues warmly welcome guests: a cat and a rabbit dressed in their best clothes welcome us into their home. Keeping these two animals company are some princes and princesses, the Mad Hatter, Don Quixote of the plain and several varieties of imaginative animals. Other statues, on the other hand, are in no condition to speak to us and remain lying on the floor, without limbs and some even with their heads cut off. In the midst of this turmoil, Nelly and Alice shake hands, the latter with her melancholic gaze downwards. It is said that these two statues were made by Nellino after the death of his sister.
In the enchanted garden, not long after you have visited it, you can still hear some voices. Works of art, statues, and paintings come to life and speak, asking questions about our history and at the same time telling their own.
Everything around us is alive. What the two artists put into their works was their soul, and this is the soul of someone who has dedicated their whole life to their passion.
The next step was to go inside the house, and the only word that came out of our mouths was a resounding “woooow!” The whole house is painted with various fairy tales. As we try to find out more about the lives of the two siblings, we learn that Alice and Nellino were devoted fans of Hans Christian Andersen. Scattered around the house are documents, a gospel, handmade clothes and notes from the siblings themselves.
The more we continue with our exploration, the more we are amazed. In two different rooms, we discover two television sets. Remember that Alice and Nellino had no electricity — so what are two televisions doing in the house? Here’s another design piece to add to their collection of masterpieces: two portraits have been painted above the screens as a tribute to Katia Ricciarelli and Luciano Pavarotti. (“Why do you need television when you are already in a world of fairy tales?”)
In another room, old clothes and mementoes from the 1980s are scattered around the floor and thrown into the wardrobe.
From inside the house, through the windows, it is possible to spy on the guardians of the place. These small, colourful, puppet-like men stand at attention on pedestals outside the entrance — quite disturbing and frightening when unintentionally illuminated by the beam of a torch.
The house has two floors, and on the second floor, stairs lead up to the roof. When evening comes, you find yourself surrounded by trees, in the dark and with a trickle of fog lapping at your head.
We left this house late at night, and the only thought in our minds while cycling back to Este was that today we had seen one of the most extraordinary places in our lives.
A footnote: years earlier, around 2007, Jacopo had accidentally reached this house with a friend. Thinking it was abandoned, they tried the doors — all locked. After a few minutes, an old man leaned out from a window and shouted something along the lines of: “No, no — go away from here, go to hell.” Only now, a decade later, is it clear who that man was. It was Nellino.
Current Status
The house passed through a period of complex legal uncertainty following Nellino’s death. According to accounts published by a local source, a purported domestic collaborator of Nellino produced a forged will assigning the property to himself rather than to the legitimate heirs, leaving the building without a clear owner for over ten years. The legal dispute was eventually resolved, and the property passed to its rightful inheritors. The new owner, in a statement to a local newspaper, said the house would not be demolished: “My dream? That an artist comes to live here and revives the art of the Bergaminis.” He acknowledged that restoration would cost an estimated 500,000 euros and expressed uncertainty about whether a formal museum use was feasible, but was unequivocal that whatever happens, “it will be done in maximum respect for Alice and Nellino.”
As of the time of the original visit in 2017, the house was entirely open and unguarded. Subsequent visits by other documentarians have noted that vandals have since destroyed a significant portion of the exterior sculptures. The interior paintings appear to have survived in better condition. The future of the property remains unresolved as of 2024.
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