The Villa Diodati is a mansion in Cologny, a village near Lake Geneva in Switzerland. The source dates the villa to 1710. It was originally called Villa Belle Rive, and Lord Byron renamed it after the Diodati family, who owned it.
Byron rented the villa from June 10 to November 1, 1816, and lived there with his physician, John William Polidori. Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Godwin, who later became Mary Shelley, and Claire Clairmont were frequent visitors. During three rainy days in June the group told stories. Mary Shelley, then 18, wrote the first draft of Frankenstein. Polidori's The Vampyre, inspired by a Byron fragment, is considered the start of the Romantic vampire genre.
The villa has remained in private ownership. As of 2011 it had reportedly been divided into luxury apartments.
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