The building, a picturesque corner of England surrounded by an “exotic” garden below the ancient Roman Road, was built in 1888 by the Anglican pastor and naturalist Clarence Bicknell, following the designs of the English architect Clarence Tait and Giovenale Gastaldi (Francesco Giovanelli company), with the aim of creating a place where members of the English colony could relax by reading or attending concerts. With a rectangular plan ending in an apse and a front porch, simple tripartite windows framed by round arches, it reflects the canons of nineteenth-century eclecticism, with references to Victorian religious architecture of neo-Gothic taste. Particular attention was paid to the materials used: courses of sandstone alternating with bricks in the wall facing; marble in the porch columns, now almost completely hidden from view by a centuries-old wisteria; graffiti panels decorated with symbolic motifs dedicated to the sun, earth, and sea, likely designed by Bicknell himself. Inside, the large reading room convertible into an auditorium ends with a raised semicircular apse that makes it resemble a church. It is illuminated by a large central skylight mechanically openable in the wooden framework of the ceiling. Around three sides of the room runs a wooden mezzanine: the one above the entrance, present from the beginning, and the two side ones added in the 1960s to house the collections. Since 1937 the “Clarence Bicknell” Museum-Library has been the seat of the International Institute of Ligurian Studies.
Information on the English Cultural Center
Via Romana, 39
18012 Bordighera (Imperia)
0184/263694
bicknell@istitutostudiliguri.191.it
https://www.iisl.it
Source: MIBACT
