The increasing interest in the concept of the so-called ‘escape’ from the city, fueled by the recent pandemic, puts the holiday villa at the centre of research attention. The fate of the villa in contemporary architecture and research culture reflects its very own position: outside of the ‘urban’ centres of knowledge and critical inquiry, it is still abundantly present as an unexamined source of architectural intelligence, history and ideology. This situation is particularly applicable to Italy, the birthplace of the villa: in histories focusing on Italian post-war architecture, this type of building is strikingly absent despite a revival of this building type in this period. This contribution focuses on one chapter of a larger thesis to examine the role that two exhibitions, held at the Triennale di Milano in Italy in 1933 and 1964, had in constructing and reproducing the unsustainable dream and ideology of owing a holiday villas in Italy.