Villino in Viareggio

In the late 19th and early 20th century, Viareggio was a fashionable seaside resort frequented by the rich bourgeoisie, nobility, members of the House of Savoy, intellectuals and many famous artists, writers and poets of the time such as Gabriele D’Annunzio, Eleonora Duse, Marta Abba, Luigi Pirandello and Galileo Chini.

The Viareggio promenade with its wooden bathing buildings, elegant shops, dance halls and cafés chantantant are the centre of worldliness. In this context, villas and small villas stand on the Versilia coast, particularly in the strip between the pine forest and the sea shore, and important buildings such as the Hotel Principe di Piemonte and the Hotel Excelsior, all characterised by Art Nouveau and eclecticism.

It was in this historical and cultural context that Maestro Giacomo Puccini decided to move his residence. From the end of the 19th century, the Maestro lived in Torre del Lago, on the shores of Lake Massaciuccoli, first in a rented house and then, from 1900, in a building he owned that he renovated according to his needs.

In the early 20th century, however, part of Lake Massaciuccoli was bought by the Ilva-Torbiere d’Italia company, which built a large peat extraction plant. This induced Puccini to move to Viareggio.

The lot chosen by Maestro Puccini is located on the corner of Viale Michelangelo Buonarroti and Via Marco Polo, facing the present Piazza Puccini.

The Villino, located within a garden with tall trees, has a longitudinal development with two short transversal arms, on two levels: basement and raised ground floor. It is therefore not a simple mezzanine floor as indicated in architect Pilotti’s drawings approved by the Viareggio Town Council, it is instead a real floor below which there is a further habitable floor mostly used for services, except for the Maestro’s study and library. A large staircase provides access to the main floor, the one used for the family’s daily life. The entrance, divided by a beautiful Art Nouveau window with the Maestro’s initials, divides the building almost like an axis of symmetry, into the two main parts: the living area on the left, the sleeping area on the right.

The recovery of a historical building is always a very complex operation, and in order to ‘revive’ a building of particular value and significance such as Giacomo Puccini’s Villino, it is necessary to consider that any intervention envisaged must be thought of in a logic that is not simply linked to recovery for mere conservation. Instead, it is fundamental to think of the recovery of an architecture with a view to reuse, completely safeguarding its integrity and historicity and, while confirming its total identity, bringing it back to life again.

In planning the restoration of the Villino, every element was considered, especially in the context of a philological restoration.

The preliminary diagnostic campaign carried out provided a general knowledge of the state of the building, its level of degradation, and an assessment of the structural and decorative vulnerability of the entire volume and its individual components, aimed at defining the structural state of conservation of parts of the façade, materials and decorated surfaces.