Villa Collebellombra extended over an area of over 180 hectares when, in 1908, the Gambelli family purchased the property. An extension that included seven colonies, the equivalent of the lands that go from the current Villa Serena Clinic to the Acquasanta area, from one side to the other.
The Gambelli family was already known in Jesi since 1800, and not only for its landed properties. In fact, it owned the grocery store on Corso Vittorio Emanuele, known today as Corso Matteotti, where the iconic Caffè Saccaria is located. A presence in the city that included the historic home in the building adjacent to today's Pinacoteca Civica, a structure that extended all the way to Via Mazzini.
In the historical moment of the nascent wealthy bourgeoisie of the early twentieth century, the entire estate represented a form of social redemption for the family: the Gambellis, in fact, continued to carry on the commercial activity and to manage those lands maintaining the management system, now consolidated, of sharecropping.
Honorato Honorati decided to build Villa Collebellombra in 1790 in the style of Venetian villas, with the typical Palladian model. The villa was designed as a two-story building with a central body with a rectangular plan surmounted by a large tympanum, and a façade divided into three parts by pilasters.
After a modification made in 1920, in which the main body was connected to the grain warehouses creating an Art Nouveau hall, Collebellombra came to present the typical layout of the villas of the Marche: an eighteenth-century chapel still officiated, the stables today become places of life of the current Gambelli family, the lemon house and the caretaker's house inside the property, a large courtyard, the garden with fountain and a vast park embracing the villa.
The Marquis Luciano Honorati sold Villa Collebellombra in 1908 for 312,000 lire, giving the Gambellis a property that extended over 180 hectares of land. Today's equivalent of the area that extends from the Villa Serena Clinic to the Acquasanta area, from one side to the other.
Villa Collebellombra also survived the Second World War, not without consequences. During the conflict it was occupied by both the German and Allied armies, resulting in the felling of many trees in the garden. At the end of the war, the entrance gate was moved further upstream and two hectares of woodland were lost, from the initial five hectares to the current three.
Made up mostly of tall woodland, with three hectares of centuries-old oaks and holm oaks that hosted the construction of Villa Collebellombra and its history, the park was elevated to a monument of historical value and protected by the Superintendence of Fine Arts after numerous historical vicissitudes.
A main avenue of olive trees allows you to enter the woods through a second avenue of lime trees, while the garden can be reached directly with a second access without an avenue.
The “Italian garden” on the front of the building is typically 19th century and symmetrical, and over time it has been enriched with some trees in vogue between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, including cedars of Lebanon and palm trees.
Villa Collebellombra is home to a fauna composed of many species of nocturnal birds of prey such as owls, little owls, barn owls and scops owls, as well as mammals such as badgers, weasels, hedgehogs, porcupines, foxes, wild boars and roe deer, who have found a welcoming and safe place in the woods.
The garden on the front of the house has a fountain in the center but it has been disused for many years. In the woods there is a small lake populated by carp.