VILLA TIMMY [IT]

Exploration #138. Villa Timmy is a gracious abandoned country house in Italy. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any information about it.

VILLA SPECCHI GEMELLI [IT]

Exploration #137. This villa takes its name from a couple of mirrors that are still intact at its entrance. The villa is located in the countryside of central Italy and from the outside looks like just an old farmhouse. The walls of its rooms were originally decorated with very fine paintings and tapestries. Now unfortunately the whole property has been devastated and vandalized.

VILLA LA ROMANTICA [IT]

Exploration #134 Villa La Romantica. The first building, which would later become Villa La Romantica, was built by the ancient Bolognese senatorial family Berò. They owned the villa in the 16th and 17th centuries, while in 1700 it was acquired by the Savini, owners of a large amount of land in the area.

At the beginning of the 19th century, much of their property was already acquired by the Cocchi family, who also owned the canapiculture business (before the Savini), which represented a fundamental source of income. The villa, on the other hand, passed to General Giuseppe Grabinski during the period of French domination. Luigi Cocchi bought the Berò estate between 1830 and 1832 from General Grabinski (1771-1843). The house on the Berò estate was not altered for forty years, until Alfonso (Luigi’s son) decided in 1872, a few months after his marriage to Marietta Garino, widow of Valperga, to start restoration and rebuilding work on the villa. The Cocchi family went to Budrio in the summer and his wife Marietta in particular benefited considerably from her poor health. Alfonso named the building on the Berò estate Villa Mary, in honour of his beloved wife, and intensified his efforts, which during the 1870s led him to design the building (consisting of eight flats and a silk dryer), a greenhouse and an ice house, which were built a few years later.

Around 1885 the restoration work was complete and Villa Mary took on its splendid appearance, characterised by marvellous stucco work, rooms furnished with remarkable artistic imagination and witty architectural solutions. Unfortunately, in 1888 Marietta Garino died and Alfonso Cocchi (born in 1850), although saddened by his wife’s sudden death, tried to maintain the business in Rome. During the summers in Budrio, Alfonso became closer to Anna Pagani (born in 1869) and in 1890 their first child was born. In a short time the number of children increased (up to seven) and Cocchi realised that it was necessary to rework the structure of the house, which was partly redesigned to accommodate a large family.

In 1892, the villa – equipped with electric light, powered by huge batteries placed in the basement, and radiators – took on its definitive appearance, marked by the addition of some appendages, forming terraces and a portico. In 1894 Alfonso married Anna Pagani and two years later the patriarch donated all his property to his wife and children, continuing to live with them until his death in 1921. On 31 October 1928, Bianca Zucchelli bought the Cocchi properties, including the famous Villa Mary. The people of Budrio were immediately impressed by the habits of the new inhabitant, who wore long dresses, often made of silk and adorned with very elegant lace. Zucchelli’s strong link with the past led her to give the villa the name “Villa La Romantica”, precisely because it defended the aesthetic canons of the 19th century. The inhabitants of Budrio extended the name to Bianca, who organised parties and refined receptions.
Bianca stayed in her villa until the day she died: 25 December 1943. The owner donated the house to the “Casa per artisti ed operatori dello spettacolo” (House for artists and operators in the performing arts) in Bologna, but unfortunately the bombings that took place between 1944 and 1945 jeopardised the viability of the villa, which was later acquired by the Fondazione Zucchelli.
Unfortunately, from that moment on, the villa was left to its fate. The well-kept vegetation, which at first characterised the beautiful surrounding gardens, began to creep in everywhere, enveloping the building and it was gradually stripped of its furnishings and decorations. Today, all that remains is what time, thieves and vandals have failed to destroy or take away.

(source:  budrionext.it).

VILLA MAGNANI [IT]

Exploration #129 Villa Magnani. Villa Magnani, aka “Villa delle ali nere” was built in 1850 by the great impresario Giovanni Pietro Magnani (1812-1893). The complex, which also includes a stable and an ice-house, is built on an artificial terrace supported by massive stone arches. An enormous park full of century-old plants, fountains and artificial caves surrounds the entire villa. The building consists of three floors connected by an elegant Carrara marble staircase.

Villa Magnani has been emptied of all its furnishings, but all the rooms are decorated with frescoes of exceptional quality, still in good condition during our visit. Many of the frescoes depict well-known views of the area. In most of the rooms the wallpaper has come off, showing the background that used to be made from newspapers (many newspapers overlapping each other smoothed out the roughness of the old walls and allowed wallpaper to be laid without folds).

VILLA DEL MATEMATICO [IT]

Exploration #128 Villa del Matematico. This large villa, built between the 18th and 19th centuries, belonged to a brilliant professor of mathematical analysis, one of the greatest mathematician of the first half of the 20th century.

Already a professor at several Italian universities, he was called to Pisa in 1930 with the hope of reviving the fortunes of the Scuola Normale, a task which he performed admirably. He was a member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, the Pontificia Accademia delle Scienze and various other Italian and foreign academies and scientific institutions, which awarded him various prizes and recognitions. After his death, the University of Pisa named the Institute of Mathematics after him.

The villa was first used during his periods of rest and from August 1943 as a fixed abode due to the bombing of his main house in Pisa. The professor was also one of the 13 signatories of the anti-fascist Manifesto of the philosopher Benedetto Croce and, together with other local personalities, it was in this villa that he set up the local committee of the C.L.N., which shortly afterwards formed the partisan formation in the Pisan mountains “Nevilio Casarosa”, which proved decisive in the victory and liberation against the Germans.

After his death, the villa was inhabited by one of his daughters, who abandoned it in the late 1990s for unknown reasons. The Villa del Matematico is now in a very precarious condition, the second floor has completely collapsed and only a few rooms on the first floor are accessible. On the ground floor, however, there are still documents that belonged to the emeritus professor and many paintings that were probably painted by his daughter. The property is currently being sold for more than EUR 1 million, but the villa is running out of time before it finally collapses.

VILLA MINETTA [IT]

Exploration #123 Villa Minetta. Villa Minetta, a.k.a. ‘Villa del Vinaio’ (Vintner’s Villa) because of the many bottles of wine still stored in the cellar, is a historic Italian residence dating back to the late 19th century. The villa was owned by the richest man in Italy, Count Edilio Raggio, a member of parliament in the Kingdom of Italy. A shipowner, he founded the Cornigliano steelworks and the Novi coalworks, which produced coal briquettes for railway traction. He was responsible for the foundation of the hospital in Novi, thanks to an exorbitant donation for the time. His fortune at the time of his death was estimated at over 200 million lire (about 15 billion euro), not including real estate and numerous industrial plants.

In 1877, the Villa Minetta also hosted King Vittorio Emanuele II and Prince Umberto di Savoia, the future Umberto I. The imprint of the villa is reminiscent of French tastes, but what dominates is above all an exuberant touch that adds terracotta statues in the external niches, friezes, stained glass, as well as marble, frescoes and columns in the interiors. The main building, surrounded by 6 hectares of parkland, also had a lemon grove, a swimming pool, a tennis court, a greenhouse, a stable, a caretaker’s house with a turret and a tractor depot. When Count Raggio died in 1906, the villa was taken over by his son, who lived there until 1930, when he moved to a not far away and always extraordinary residence, Villa Lomellina.

From that moment on, several owners followed one another, including the German SS who took this very building as their headquarters. After the Second World War, a well-known family of circus performers, Giovanni Palmiri (stage name “Diavolo Rosso”), lived in the villa. Palmiri was very famous in Italy at the time. His act, in which he swings on the tip of a 50-metre high bamboo cane, leaves all the Italian squares breathless.
After the circus, the Villa was bought by the Spinoglio family, who made it their residence. The Spinoglio family’s fortune, which will be the last to inhabit the villa, also comes to an end, and the property goes up for auction. Dody Al Fayed, who wanted to come and live there with Lady Diana, became interested in buying it.

In the mid-nineties, the Villa Minetta was again auctioned off and changed hands several times, the last of these being the industrialist Valter Marletti who wanted to renovate it, but failed. Since then, the villa has fallen into disrepair and its interior has been destroyed, first by thieves who took everything inside, including the marble fireplaces, and then by vandals who completed the work.

PROFONDO ROSSO [IT]

Exploration #112. A big villa located in the italian countryside. Unfortunately I didn’t find any information about this place.

CHÂTEAU DE VADENCOURT [FR]

Exploration #100. The Château de Vadencourt is located on the territory of the municipality of Vadencourt, in the department of the Somme, north-east of Amiens, France. The castle was built in the 17th century. Henri Pingré de Vraignes acquired the domain of Vadencourt around 1680 and passed it on to his son-in-law, Jean-François de Chassepot de Beaumont, chief captain of the Grande Fauconnerie de France who had the castle rebuilt almost entirely at the beginning of the 18th century. He sold the castle in 1738 to François de Quellerie de Chanteraine who completed its reconstruction in the 1740s. Charles Hourdequin bought the castle in 1921. His granddaughter, Christiane Vandenheede, who died in 2005 bequeathed the castle to the Orphelins apprentices d’Auteuil, who abandoned it.

The Château consists of a central main building framed by outbuildings to the north and a farmhouse to the south. All the buildings are in chalk, except the south elevation of brick and stone. The main building is on the ground floor with a height of floor covered by a roof in the Mansard. The two wings in return of square, sheltering the stables (to the north) and the kitchen with the farmer’s accommodation (to the south), are covered by a roof with long sides, exposed gables. They are supported by two round towers topped with a pepperbox roof. A forged iron gate, executed by Jean-Baptiste Veyren, known as Le Vivarais, marks the entrance to the castle between the two towers. Also the handrail of the staircase is also attributed to Vivarais, in the north-west corner of the body of home.

The south wing has retained its seventeenth-century south wall with alternating beds of brick and stone and projecting quadrangular corner pavilions. The facades, the roof and the main gate are protected as historical monuments (source: wikipedia).

I visited this castle in 2016. After, it was devastated by fire on July 10, 2018, and the left wing was totally devastated. The building was finally sold by auction on June 7, 2019 and restoration works started.

VILLA AMELIE [FR]

Exploration #92 Villa amelie. This villa was owned by the owner of a textile factory nearby. The business was established in 1856 by a frenchman. The founder’s son took over the business in 1899 and in the same year he built the luxurious mansion in sight distance of his factory. The interior of Villa Amelie were very refined, wood paneling in the Gothic style, stucco, tapestries, marble fireplaces and precious decorations. Precious furniture decorate this place. In the attic, a huge library filled with books, showed the power and the wealth of this cultured family.

The textile factory got destroyed during WWII. After WWII the former success was not reappearing and in 1969 the owner had to sell to company to an investment group. It was in service till 1981, when it was finally shutdown. The widow of the last boss lived alone in the mansion until 2000 when she moved to Paris and never came back. Since then the place has been nicely decaying until 2014 when the main building was set ablaze by vandals.

Next to the mansion there was a large chapel with an organ of a church of 1748 and several small rooms (a workshop and a hobby room) which survived by the fire. The organ has already been stripped from valuable metal parts, but even the empty wooden shell looks gorgeous. In addition to the organ there was also a wonderful rare automatic Welte Mignon Piano.

CHATEAU LUMIERE [FR]

Exploration #94 Chateau Lumiere. Chateau Lumiere (literally “castle of light”) is a beautiful 20th Century French Chateau built in Reinaissance style. Probably the castle has this name due to the window in the roof where the light is falling inward.

This grand mansion has been owned by a wealthy family of industrialists. The Strasbourg architects Gottfried Julius Berninger and Gustave Henri Krafft designed this chateau for the tobacco factory owners Jules Burrus and his wife Hermance Hélabert. The building was set with a large gate at its entrance and fenced in equally beautiful metalwork manufactured by the locksmith Leo Feist in Strasbourg. The smelter Val d’Osne created decorative urns to be placed on columns that supported the gate and fencing. Internal decoration by many skilled craftsmen and artists would see stained glass by Camissar, sculpture by Riegger, ironwork by L. Feist and dining furniture by Erhard-Friese. The most iconic feature is a stunning skylight which floods the three-storey entrance hall. Consequently, the foyer is bright and light even on the cloudiest of days.

The Burrus residence was at that time to be known as Chateau Burrus. In 1911 Maurice Burrus inherited the Chateau, when his father died, and settled there. The nationalitation of the tobacco industry and the closure of the Tobacco factory in 1947 led Maurice Burrus to leave the town and retire to Geneva. Subsequently, he sold Chateau Lumiere. Ownership of the chateau then changed hands over the years. It is hard to pinpoint when the house was abandoned. Most people agree that is was likely some time in the 1980’s.

Nowadays the castle has been renovated.