Villa Croce

Villa Croce , in Genoa , was built at the end of the 19th century by the Croce family on a pre-existing building of the 16th-17th century, of which it probably maintains the wall structure.

The villa is located in the suburban area of the city transformed since 1897 with the construction of the ring road to the sea, the coastal road that connects the center to the eastern outskirts.

The subdivision for residential use of the area surrounding the villa, which partially reduces its ownership, uses a new model of a nineteenth-century house to which the building itself conforms for the treatment of the elevations resolved with ashlar basement and elevation. punctuated by the sill and string course frames and by the tympanums around the openings. In 1951 the owners donated Villa Croce with the surrounding garden to the Municipality of Genoa to use as a museum and public park.

Since 1985 it has been the seat of the Museum of Contemporary Art after the restoration which philologically reconstructs the original spaces by eliminating incongruous elements, restoring the parts damaged during the last war and recovering both the nineteenth-century wall decorations in eclectic style and the still existing furnishings .

The rooms on the ground floor retain the original marble fireplaces and the dry tempera decorations on the wall dated 1874, with typical subjects of the second half of the nineteenth century, grotesques, mythological scenes, cartouches with depictions of animals and, in the room dedicated to conferences, some interesting views of the villa and of Via Ruffini as they appeared in that period, with the church of Sacro Cuore and San Giacomo still located on the southern side of the street and a path that started from the villa and reached directly the sea.

On the other hand, the original pastel-colored pictorial skin of the façades was not recovered, but a white monochromatic tint was used, re-proposed inside on the two upper floors without decorations.