The secrets of this earth are not for all men to see, but only for those who seek them
Mansions
Villa San Michele – Capri, Italy
Oct 8th
In 1929, this small but exquisite house on the island of Capri became world famous when its owner, the Swedish doctor Axel Munthe, published his memoir of how he built his remarkable home. The Story of San Michele details how Munthe, who made his fortune treating patients in Rome, found a series of crumbling, traditional stone buildings on a narrow street in Anacapri, and set about extending and embellishing them to make his fantasy villa, compete with an atrium, studio, dining room, salon, and a large bedroom.
Rather than using new materials, Munthe gathered a wildly eclectic collection of architectural fragments, including Roman columns and mosaics, Norman windows, and Moorish tiles, and incorporated them into the building, which was constructed using local labour. The villa is spread out over several levels, built as it is on a rock overhanging the Gulf of Naples. More >
Villa Girasole – Tuscany, Italy
Sep 12th
This summer villa was the brainchild of the engineer Angelo Invernizzi, who lived and worked in Genoa but brought his family here on vacation. On a gently rising slope in vine-growing country, a rectangular concrete platform supports an L-shaped house, the top level of which is cut away to form a roof terrace.
At the angle of the L-shape is a spiral staircase that literally forms the pivot of the plan – the upper section is mounted on a steel track and is connected to two motors. These enable the hose to rotate on small wheels through 360 degrees in the course of nine hours and 20 minutes, hence the house’s name the Italian word for a sunflower. More >
Villa Rotonda – Vicenza, Italy (Villa Capra)
Sep 7th
In architectural riddle: what common spirit underlines English castles, American public buildings, Swiss railroad stations, Spanish libraries, Tuscan villas and Canadian hotels? The answer: all these buildings echo the influence of the Greeks and Romans, as filtered through the genius of Renaissance man Andrea Palladio, the 16th century Italian architect whose reinterpretations of the design legacies of antiquity have been the dominant language of architecture for the past 400 years. The power, uplift and simplicity of Palladio’s work are best captured in Villa Rotonda, the country home he designed in the 1560s for Paolo Almerico, a retired cleric.
Crowning a hill in the Tuscan countryside, Villa Rotonda seems poised between heaven and earth. The gentle, graceful curve of its dome reaches skyward, while the four identical porticoes that flank it anchor the house firmly to the ground. Its scale is just grand enough to inspire but restrained enough not to overpower. More >
House of Jacques Coeur – Bourges, France
Sep 7th
Jacques Coeur rose from modest beginnings to become the owner of a fleet of ships trading with the East from Aigues-Mortes and financier of the French king. He built a house in his home town of Bourges on the scale of a ducal palace. Coeur himself was probably responsible for many aspects of the design, including the most original features, the intricate plan and the inventive decoration.
An imposing gatehouse, with a large chapel window on the upper floor, leads to an arcaded courtyard diversified with stair-towers. On the left are the public parts of the building while to the right are the kitchens and family quarters, a plan far more clear-headed in distinguishing different functions than others of time. More >
Ightham Mote – Kent, England
Sep 7th
Ightham Mote is a small 14th- and 15th-century manor house in a secluded position which looks like a perfect medieval survival. It sits in its ring of water and from almost any vantage point reveals a blend of mellow stone, brick and half-timbering, in seemingly accidental proportions.
Although the house has undergone many alterations over the centuries, its scale, layout and materials remain remarkably unchanged. The moat has had a preservative effect; it makes this a difficult building to add to. More >
