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Villa Roncioni - Pisa in Tuscany

In 1468 Antonio di Guelfo Roncioni became the owner of some lands in Pugnano, after marrying the last descendant of the lords of Ripafratta, and started to build a big house with a staircase in front of it. In the second half of the 18th century the house became a holiday dwelling-place by order of Francesco and Angelo Roncioni and the façade assumed the present-day appearance.

A lot of artists, such as Tempesti, Donati and A. Niccolini, decorated the inner rooms and the staircase with splendid frescoes. In the mid-19th century the small Italian-style garden disappeared and became the present-day Parco Romantico (Romantic Park) of over 5 hectares: the nymphaeum with Bacchus’s Temple and the cave-cellar survived, but with a new neoclassical façade. In this romantic setting Foscolo fell in love with Isabella Roncioni, a beautiful woman who inspired “Le ultime lettere di Jacopo Ortis” (Jacopo Ortis’s Last Letters), which describes the paths and the fountain of the villa. The Bigattiera is a spectacular element: it was designed by the architect A. Gherardesca according to the English style of the Abbazia di San Luca, an original example of neo-gothic industrial architecture used as a factory for the manufacture of the silk. Unfortunately, a disease similar to plague killed the silkworm, thus obliging the producers to change their business.

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