The Vesuvian Villas of the 18th Century. (with photos)
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The Vesuvian Villa of 18th century represents a style of architecture that was realised under the reign of King Charles III of Borbone, who was considered to be one of the most advanced Kings of the century. In 1734, Charles I became King of the two Sicilies. Naples after almost 2 centuries of vice-Kingdom, became independent, and this was a push for all the intellectuals in Naples, scientists and cultured people to create the basis for the future development of the philosophical thought, and all the arts in general.
In architecture the King chose the right people to stimulate building, giving an outstanding impulse for the realisation of noble palaces and residences, as well as monuments such as the Royal Palace of Caserta.
The architects Fuga, San Felice, Vaccaro, Gioffredo, up to Vanvitelli were some of the Kings favouritès who developed Napolitan Baroque. It was Vanvitelli who reformed the Baroque Style simplifying and sobering it, in his research for the essential which was the main characteristic of the neo-classical style.
Among the architectural masterpieces there is the Royal Palace of Portici and the Vesuvian Villas of the famous ‘Golden Mile’ where the Barouque Style finds it’s lighter and more fantastic expression towards the Rococò.
In the Pane’s monography this architecture was defined as a development of the architectural style called ‘Rocaille’.
These summer residences that we find at the feet of Vesuvio represent a link to the following work of Fanzago ‘……..the style called “rocaille” finds it’s peculiarity, not in great richness and decorative lessening but in a tendency to deny the still valid ways, represented by the geometrical order for a freer effect of naturalistic inspiration’.
Before describing the Vesuvian Villas of San Giorgio a Cremano, it is preferable to introduce the two main types which villas reflect.
They can be divided in agricultural villa where farming activity is evident, and in “Villa di Delizie” or holidays residences which appear like residences for the nobility, thanks to their large spaces.
Reading the map of the Duke of Noja we distinguish the 2 types of Villa:
1) Productive Villas:
The first plan is shown by the typical suburban villas present before the construction of the Royal Palace Of Portici. They are situated more inland and used for the production of food which has always been offered by the land’s fertility.
Among these villas we find Villa Tufarelli, Villa Bonocore with St. Michael’s Chapel, Villa Marulli with the Pittore Chapel. In Villa Tufarelli for example, the plan show the great rustic courtyard that is the principle element around which all the costruction developed.
It is situated beyond the entrance door. To reach Villa Bonocore instead, it is necessary to pass through all the entrance way where via San Michele begins, and where we find the entrance door. Here also the rustic courtyard developed along the front of the building.
Another characteristic of the agricultural Villas is the Chapel for the nobility, situated close to the building (see Villa tufarelli), or next to the entrance door and along the street, as in the case of St. Michele Chapel near Villa Bonocore.
2) The “Ville di Delizie”
The majority of the Vesuvian Villas belongs to the second category, that in many cases consists of buildings developing from a radical trasformation of pre-existing buildings. These Villas, made up by a complex structure, developed orthogonally from the entrance door up to the atrium, courtyard, gardens and park terminating usually with a shine Villa Bruno or with a “coffeaus” or like in the case of Villa Sinicropi, with a secondary entrance door. Thanks to this spatial organisation, these buildings keep both relation with the roadway and the nearby villas, and the farm land keeping their characteristic of city palace and villa.
The main body of the villas do not have green filters towards the public streets but the main entrance way is just under many balconies and windows rich with stuccos and decorated frames.
Originally the main body of the villas had certainly been made up by a maximum of two floors with two wings going towards the garden.
In some cases the structure has an elliptic shape developing along a transversal axis contrasted with the longitudinal axis, which is the prospectic axis along which different open spaces are created.
The groundfloor stairways are placed in an archway corresponding to an uncovered terrace on the first floor.
The courtyard is of a reduced dimension and typical of the Baroque taste; it terminates in an exedra closed by a going towards the garden, further closed by a barred-metal gate offering trasparency.
VILLA BRUNO - Via Cavalli di Bronzo, 20
Villa Bruno belonged first to the Monteleone family and then to the Lietos. They often hosted Naples’ Archbishop, Cardinal Ruffo Scilla, who used to holiday in San Giorgio a Cremano. Later on, it was bought by the Righetti family, who built the famous foundry at the beginning of the XIX century and who sold the estate to the Bruno brothers. They owned it until the municipality of San Giorgio a Cremano took it over and restored it.
One of the peculiarities of this villa is represented by the two bas-reliefs in false bronze portraying two horse heads situated on abutments on the two sides of the main entrance.
These elements were placed there to commemorate the casting of two monumental equestrian statues that took place in the foundry annexed to the villa. The statues portrayed Charles III and Ferdinand IV Bourbon and were situated in Piazza del Plebiscito in Naples.
From the entrance portal it is possible to see the main door framing, in perspective, the niche set at the farthest end of the estate.
This scenographic effect is obtained because the main axis of the architectural plan coincides with the perspective axis starting with the atrium and the next hallway and ending with the final baroque aedicule. The bright alley in the park standing out behind the entrance hall is furnished with stone seats situated at the sides alternating with statue pedestals and vases for more than two-hundred metres.
Inside the garden there used to be an iron and glass greenhouse and a semicircular exedra decorated with statues. Nowadays the exedra has been replaced with an open air arena where different kinds of events promoted by the city council take place.
In the greenery we can still see some of the statues that were once interspersed in the park and that date back to the XIX century, while we can find a bust portraying Jupiter on a pedestal in the hallway.
The courtyard facing Via Cavalli di Bronzo once showed two century-old holmoaks forming ideal green wings. Today long-stemmed trees have taken their place; in summer, their lilac flowers create a delicate contrast with the recently restored pale yellow façade and let us imagine the scenographic effects produced also by the skilful use of trees, sometimes of exotic origin.
Even though it has kept its seventeenth century lay-out, the villa has a substantially neo-classical aspect, while the arrangement of the spaces has changed because of subsequent extensions.
The back façade is very simple and yet it keeps a wide segmental arch typical of the baroque and the corresponding main balcony deprived of the decorations that once connected it to the opening underneath.
The sinuous balcony as well as the wide belvedere terraces show the wish to enjoy the natural beauties that the Vesuvian scenario offered; this is one of the chief characteristics of these noble holiday lodges. The final curved spandrel wall frames an elliptical niche containing the terracotta statue of a blessing St. Gennaro.
Fortunately, inside the villa the main floor still has XIX century decorations and frescoes portraying landscapes: at the time it was usual for these mansions to have decorations in the halls imitating the external environment. Among the other elements we can still appreciate the rococo doors. But what makes this villa a singular case among the typical Vesuvian villas is the presence of the foundry.
Francesco Righetti, from Rome, was the founder to whom Canova entrusted his works; originally, Canova was commissioned two statues by Napoleon as part of a project that should have led to the construction of Bonaparte’s forum. The well-known events involving Naples in the years straddling the XVIII and the XIX century led Canova to repeatedly go to Naples to complete the equestrian statues that were eventually realized by Ferdinand IV and placed in Piazza del Plebiscito in 1829.
It is interesting to notice the layout of the foundry and of the nearby spaces located at the farthest end of the estate. Today their ruins border on the present via Giuseppe Guerra.
The main building, by now roofless, has a rectangular plan and five round arches used to hold up the roof. In the middle of the main building a pit was built to contain the monumental work.
It is worth to underline Righetti’s skill: by using an innovative technique based on the principle of communicating vessels he was able to cast the firs statue, in 1819, in only five minutes.
The reason why, in 1816, Righetti chose San Giorgio to build the foundry — later transformed into a glassworks by the Brunos — seems to be connected to the active collaboration with Marquis Cerio, who was Canova’s great admirer and interceded to allow Righetti to set up the structure in spite of the neighbouring nobles’ considerable complaints.
The above information about the foundry underlines the anomaly this building represents in the context of the Vesuvian area; it is interesting also from the point of view of industrial archaeology.
Along San Giorgio a Cremano’s ancient streets the villas form a continuous curtain behind which rich green areas are set. They relate to the surrounding environment and to the indoor parts of the villas according to the taste and wishes of each landowner.
If we go out of the town centre itself and cross Piazza Massimo Troisi, going along “the street taking to the mountain” we find The Painter’s Chapel (The Painter’s Place).
VILLA VANNUCCHI - Corso Roma, 43/47
Around 1755, along the ancient Via Teglie Giacomo d’Aquino Caramanico, “the King’s chamber gentleman”, bought two estates belonging to Giovanni Battista Imparato — one was a mansion and the other a Roman-style lodge” — and a fourteen-modius farm, partly covered with a wood.
The mansion is one of the stateliest villas of the Vesuvian area as the representation of the façade overlooking the street designed by architect Antonio Donnamaria shows. This wide façade presents a series of Corinthian pilasters alternating with two rows of balconies having bellied wrought iron banisters. The lower row of balconies, on the main floor, is surmounted by curved gables, while the upper row has no decorations. The back façade is open to the surrounding view and shows a sequence of arches, loggias and porticoes overlooking the Italian garden downstairs. The garden was designed in 1783 by architect Pompeo Schiantarelli and was characterized, as we can read in Carafa’s plan, by an alley starting from an exedra at one end of the courtyard and leading to a fountain with four symmetrical basins arranged diagonally to the alley. The fountain is the hub of the garden; from there fourteen alleys radiate out towards the boundaries of the estate and they are all arranged according to the perspective of the view.
The “Villa and the delights of the d’Aquinos called Caramanico” reached its full splendour in the XIX century, during Joaquin Murat’s reign, thanks to the receptions and balls organized by Prince Tommaso d’Aquino and his wife Teresa Lembo, Murat’s niece. “When Joaquin came here, it was clear that he could not come alone, but the number of those who were invited to join him was so huge that it could have been compared to a whole population… During these receptions ice-creams and refreshments were offered in such enormous amounts that there was a great squandering”.
In the second half of the XIX century the villa was bought by Count Lorenzo Van den Henvel; in 1912 the estate was then sold to the Vannucchis.
The villa has such a large front that you cannot grasp it all at once: the narrow street prevents the sight of the most suggestive part of the villa, the factory, where the lateral bodies close the two rows of balconies and the design of the architecture is entirely planned according to the landscape and to the declining soil.
The magnificent back garden, the extension of which is second only to the Royal Park of Portici, still contains some wonderful camphor-trees, pines, holm- oaks, palm-trees, magnolias, date-palms, cedars, mimosa and apricot-trees.
The Chapel is dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The sacristy, the music-hall and a theatre (an ex-stable) are the other elements of the great architectural plan of this noble mansion today belonging to the Municipality of San Giorgio a Cremano.
VILLA BONOCORE - Via Alessandro Manzoni, 41
The estate belonged to the Rano Family and then to the Bonocore Family. Presently it is only a ruin. It is a huge rectangular construction in “tufo” stone and almost forgotten nowadays, and unaccessibile, being lower than the main street. The villa doesn’t belong to the “Villa di Delizie” but was a farming villa. The presence of two terraces at the extremity of the structure does not make the massive aspect lighter, being placed too high. The original plan presented the entrance to the farm from a channel (Alveo San Michele) a sort of a laneway that the Duke of Noja called “the street leading to the little catini water basins” (la strada che porta ai catini). Here we can still see an exedra where there was the entrance door to the near property, to the Chapel dedicated to St. Michael Archangel. From here a long alley started leading to the buildings’ entrance where there was a large rustic courtyard where the agricultural activity developed.
VILLA BORRELLI - Via Bruno Buozzi, 27
The villa still keeps the name of the owner, Antonio Borrelli, who bought it in 1877 as Gleijeses informs us. This building although later elevated, keeps the Barouque print on the original façade. The two window still present baroque frames and scrollwork while the balcony still has the original gracious wrought ironwork. After the entrance, we find a gracious 18th century atrium with plasterwork and fanlights. The atrium becomes larger at the height of the stairway on the left of the entrance. An entranceway is so shaped with 3 bays, through which we go into an internal courtyard to which the first floor corresponds to a large panoramic terrace.
On the opposite side, at the bottom of the courtyard, there is a terrace sustained by 3 arches, which divide the building from the back garden, and gives to the courtyard an elegant symmetrical structure.
There are still some high quality decorations that remain; a large framed 18th century mask is at the top of the stairway, and some decorations in the joints of the stairway vaults.
VILLA CARACCIOLO DI FORINO - Via Enrico Pessina, 34
There is no trace of the original building plan that the last descendent of the Caracciolo Family gave to the institute of Gerontology, today the Poor Sisters of the Visitation. From the street you can see the atrium, with a large sail-shaped vault.
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VILLA CERBONE - Via Enrico Pessina, 24
The villa belonged to the Cariati Family and was restored in the first half of the 20th century. Inspite of the 19th century style the structure remains original: the vestible leads to the large elliptic atrium from where two symmetrical staircases depart. They lead to a second atrium on the upper floor, which is similar to the lower one, and through 3 doors you enter the private rooms.
Tthere are 3 sets of ribbing dividing the ceiling into 6 sections.
The perimeter walls are elliptic and house stairways. In the curved walls there are still the upper window frames in Baroque style, which reminds us of the movement of the internal stairways; in the centre of the atrium ceiling there is a huge 19th century fresco. Nothing remains of the garden which was full of statues benches.
VILLA COSENZA - Via Cavalli di Bronzo, 51
This building belonged to the Vannucchi Family but now it is of the Cosenza 40 Family. In the 19th century the villa was completely restored and nothing remains of its original aspect, except the arches and the columns of the atrium. The decorations are kept in a good condition. It must be noticed the glass and iron balconies which enclose the arches of the back courtyard.
VILLA F. GALANTE - Via Bruno Buozzi, 17
The villa still keeps its 18th century look. On the street there are still the elaborate Baroque plasterwork. The balconies, in wrought iron and the vaults are definitely in Vaccarian style. The stairway is sustained by arches and develops on one side of the atrium. Just after the entrance, there is an exedra where there was a statue of Saint Gennaro. From the backview there are two little towers, some plasterwork and under the crowning, there is an image of the Saint who holds the family arms and two small ampullas.