After the death of his only son Julius in 1830, Heinrich Mylius had a memorial erected in the centre of the park. He commissioned the architect Gaetano Besia, who was already responsible for the redesign and remodelling of the villa, to plan and build it.
The small temple was completed in 1832. Inside the architectural structure, impressive marble reliefs were added: ‘The Death of Julius Mylius’ by Pompeo Marchesi (1832) and ‘Nemesis’ by Bertel Thorvaldsen (1835).
A stone slab with an inscription by Mylius’s friends Gaetano Cattaneo and Alessandro Manzoni was placed on the outer wall of the little temple. According to the translation by Eduard Rüppell, the text reads: Through the calm memory of a suffered misfortune, the pain is not erased, but dissolved into a soothing sentiment.