Villa Croce

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

The villa is located in the suburban area of the city transformed in 1897 with the construction of the Circonvallazione a Mare, the coastal road that connects the center to the eastern suburbs.

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

Since 1985 it has housed 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 an eclectic style and the still existing furnishings .

The rooms on the ground floor retain the original marble fireplaces and 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 e San Giacomo still located on the southern side of the street and a path that started from the villa and reached the sea directly.

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