The villa is set in a garden, in the center of a vast agricultural estate that preserves the signs of eighteenth-century planning.
When Don Giacomo Manca Amat bought land in 1774 in the area called “Vigna di Orri” from the Palmas couple, there was still no building that could be defined as a manor, but about twenty rustic houses with porches and courtyards, the church dedicated to the Blessed Virgin of Carmel or Santa Maria di Orri, a workshop, the so-called “Old Ostaria”, perhaps built on the site of the ancient post office on the Roman road from Nora to Cagliari, two gardens, an enclosed vegetable garden, two mills, a fountain, the vineyard And about two thousand trees from fruit.
In 1799, Don Giacomo, almost seventy years old, moved back to Sassari and unable to follow his business in the capital, gave Orri's property to his son Stefano. And it is to that period that the construction of the villa or the renovation of one of the rustic buildings can therefore be traced back to.
The events of the Villa d'Orri are closely linked to the figure of Stefano, Marquis of Villahermosa and Santa Croce who, in addition to building the villa and making it an important cultural and family reference center, hosted King Carlo Felice and the court in exile in the early nineteenth century, right on the estate of Orri.
Later, after the death of Stefano Manca of Villahermosa, the family's events saw Orri's estate now in good condition, now left to its own devices. The descendants of the Manca family preferred the town residence to the country residence, paying attention mainly to the agricultural production of the surrounding land; at the end of the nineteenth century, the villa was rented for many years mainly to foreigners who were enchanted by the beauty of the place.
The villa experienced a new period of development under Don Vincenzo Manca Aymerich. In the early twentieth century, after his marriage to Sofia Franchetti, a member of a noble and wealthy Tuscan family, Don Vincenzo restored the villa to make it his chosen residence during his stays on the island. With the surrounding lands restored from malaria, the park and access to the sea cleaned up, Orri once again became a holiday resort, particularly popular in summer.
After the Second World War, the villa underwent partial reconstruction of the roofs by the Civil Engineers and a completely destroyed wing was rebuilt. The entire architectural complex is based on an O-E axis: a visual axis that leads from the road to the sea; the axis of symmetry of the planimetric layout and the two main elevations of the villa; an axis along which the entire body consists of the village, mainly in raw land, the warehouses, the noble residence, the warehouses.
The central body of the villa (stately residence) is exactly on the border between two green systems: cultivated fields and parks (in the second half of the nineteenth century it was home to the best-equipped nursery in Sardinia), a dichotomy found in the two gardens in front, one upstream (O) formal in Italian style, the other at sea (E) more random. The ground floor is used as a warehouse and among the rooms that compose it, three have a rectangular floor plan with a pavilion roof set on a pointed arch. Three rooms open onto a loggia that extends along the façade E for about 35 m; it is composed of eleven arches at all times and covered by sail vaults.
The richness manifested by the interior furnishings does not shine through at all from the two austere main elevations, both symmetrical and composed with an almost engineering rigor. Upstream, a double external staircase, highlighted by four marble busts, gives access to the main floor directly from the garden. On the opposite side, a staircase, somewhat abnormal, allows the connection between the terrace on the main floor and the park. This staircase is architecturally an object in its own right, with a vague neoclassical taste, valuable on the whole, but in dissonance with the rigor found everywhere.
Both the park and the architectural complex are now in an advanced state of decay. Currently, the villa, owned by the descendants of Don Vincenzo, houses the memories and archives of the Manca family of Villahermosa.

History of studies
A review of the studies can be found in the bibliography relating to the fact sheet in the volume of the “History of Art in Sardinia” on sixteenth-nineteenth-century architecture (1992).

Bibliography:
S. Naitza, Architecture from the late '600 to purist classicism. Nuoro, Ilisso, 1992, sheet 54; Orri.
Secret Palace of Sardinia, Cagliari, 1996.