Description
Villa Floridiana is a neoclassical villa with a large park, on the Vomero hill in Naples. Since 1927 it has housed the Duca di Martina National Museum of Ceramics; the garden is a green corner with views over the gulf.
The museum gathers decorative arts, above all ceramics, from the collection that the Duke of Martina donated to Naples in 1911. It is housed in the villa's rooms, next to the private apartments of the duchess and her ladies.
The ballroom keeps its original decoration: sober stuccoes, two marble fireplaces with mirrors and a vault painted by Giuseppe Cammarano. The facade toward the sea has three floors, with the ground floor in dark lava stone and the others in white stucco.
The park mixes the geometric Italian garden with the English garden, made of winding paths and lawns open toward the gulf. The camellia grove is lovely; holm oaks, pines and palms shade the avenues.
Along the paths are fake ruins, statues and a white Ionic temple at the edge of the terraced garden: its columns frame fine views of the city. The Teatro della Verzura is elliptical, enclosed by myrtle hedges, with piperno stands.
The park is also home to a colony of about seventy protected cats, looked after with donations from animal welfare associations. Behind the villa is a small pond with turtles.
In June 1815 Ferdinand IV of Bourbon bought the estate for his morganatic wife, Lucia Migliaccio, Duchess of Floridia, and named it Floridiana in her honor. Between 1817 and 1819 the architect Antonio Niccolini rebuilt the villa and the park.
The duchess loved exotic animals. In the menageries and grottoes of the park there were birds of every kind, tigers, bears, lions and kangaroos. The latter arrived through an exchange with England that cost as many as eighteen papyri from Herculaneum.
The park was laid out by the director of Naples' Botanical Garden, Friedrich Dehnhardt, who adorned it with 150 species of plants. When the royal couple died, the property passed to the duchess's children and was then divided.
The museum gathers decorative arts, above all ceramics, from the collection that the Duke of Martina donated to Naples in 1911. It is housed in the villa's rooms, next to the private apartments of the duchess and her ladies.
The ballroom keeps its original decoration: sober stuccoes, two marble fireplaces with mirrors and a vault painted by Giuseppe Cammarano. The facade toward the sea has three floors, with the ground floor in dark lava stone and the others in white stucco.
The park mixes the geometric Italian garden with the English garden, made of winding paths and lawns open toward the gulf. The camellia grove is lovely; holm oaks, pines and palms shade the avenues.
Along the paths are fake ruins, statues and a white Ionic temple at the edge of the terraced garden: its columns frame fine views of the city. The Teatro della Verzura is elliptical, enclosed by myrtle hedges, with piperno stands.
The park is also home to a colony of about seventy protected cats, looked after with donations from animal welfare associations. Behind the villa is a small pond with turtles.
In June 1815 Ferdinand IV of Bourbon bought the estate for his morganatic wife, Lucia Migliaccio, Duchess of Floridia, and named it Floridiana in her honor. Between 1817 and 1819 the architect Antonio Niccolini rebuilt the villa and the park.
The duchess loved exotic animals. In the menageries and grottoes of the park there were birds of every kind, tigers, bears, lions and kangaroos. The latter arrived through an exchange with England that cost as many as eighteen papyri from Herculaneum.
The park was laid out by the director of Naples' Botanical Garden, Friedrich Dehnhardt, who adorned it with 150 species of plants. When the royal couple died, the property passed to the duchess's children and was then divided.