The renovation of the entire complex, which included a small house (the current Museum) and a coffee-house (today’s Villa Lucia) and the Park, was entrusted to the architect Antonio Niccolini who worked there from 1817 to 1819.
Niccolini, as shown by the autograph plan kept at the San Martino Museum, designed a building with a central rectangular body and two perpendicular and symmetrical wings facing north. Furthermore, he added, at the main entrance of the building, a small porch area for carriage stops, an architectural solution already used for the San Carlo Theater.
For the southern façade, which was on three levels due to the steep slope of the terrain, Niccolini developed a base in lava stone for the basement floor with a double-flight marble staircase that connects the building to the surrounding park, opening onto the evocative panorama of the city.
After the death of the Duchess of Floridia in 1826, the monumental buildings and the Park underwent many changes by the heirs until 1919, the year the Villa was bought by the State and destined to become a museum.
The Duca di Martina Museum has housed since 1931 one of the largest Italian collections of decorative arts, comprising over six thousand works of Western and Eastern manufacture, dating from the 12th to the 19th centuries, whose most substantial core consists of ceramics.
The collection, which gives the Museum its name, was assembled in the second half of the nineteenth century by Placido de Sangro, Duke of Martina, and donated in 1911 to the city of Naples by his heirs. The Duke, born in Naples in 1829 and belonging to a noble family closely linked to the Bourbon court, moved to Paris after the unification of Italy, where he began acquiring applied art objects, coming into contact with the leading European collectors and participating in major world exhibitions.
In 1881 his only son died and the entire collection was inherited in 1891 by his namesake nephew, Count of Marsi, who, through his wife Maria Spinelli of Scalea, donated it in 1911 to the city of Naples.
The Museum is spread over three floors: on the ground floor, in addition to some paintings, ivories, enamels, tortoiseshells, corals, and bronzes from the medieval and Renaissance periods are exhibited, along with Renaissance and Baroque majolica and glass and crystal from the 15th-18th centuries, furniture, caskets, and furnishing objects. On the first floor is the collection of 18th-century European porcelain, consisting of pieces from the most important manufactories of the eighteenth century – Meissen, Doccia, Naples, and Capodimonte – as well as French, German, and English porcelain. Finally, in the basement, there is the section of Oriental art objects, including a remarkable collection of Chinese porcelain from the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1911) dynasties and Japanese Kakiemon and Imari ware.
Niccolini, exploiting the natural slope of the land descending towards the sea, redesigned the outdoor areas, alternating large lawns and flowerbeds with scenic backdrops to ‘grove-like’ areas and steep terraces.
For the areas surrounding the main building, he adopted more regular and symmetrical solutions, in line with the neoclassical stylistic features. He also devised an open-air theater, an Ionic temple, greenhouses, and some grottoes for exotic animals – unique architectural elements still existing today within the current Park area, which convey the original picturesque atmosphere.
