La Casina delle Civette in Rome was designed in 1840 by Giuseppe Jappelli commissioned by Prince Alessandro Torlonia, and it appeared as a rustic building with exterior facing of tuff bossage and interior painted in tempera imitating rocks and wooden planks. The two buildings that the architectural complex consists of today, the main villa and the dependency, connected by a small wooden gallery and an underground passage, have little or nothing to do with the romantic refuge with alpine flavor designed in the nineteenth century by Jappelli, except for the masonry structures of the two main building bodies arranged in an “L” shape, the deliberately rustic imprint, the use of different construction materials left exposed, and the pitched roofs.
In fact, starting from 1908, the Swiss Hut began to undergo a progressive and radical transformation by the will of Alessandro’s grandson, Giovanni Torlonia Jr., assuming the appearance and denomination of “Medieval Village”; the works were directed by architect Enrico Gennari and the small building became a refined residence with large windows, loggias, porticos, turrets, decorated with majolica and stained glass.
Since 1916, the building began to be called “Villino delle Civette” because of the stained glass with two stylized owls among ivy branches, made by Duilio Cambellotti already in 1914, and for the almost obsessive recurring theme of the owl in the decorations and furniture, desired by Prince Giovanni, a gruff man and lover of esoteric symbols.
In 1917 architect Vincenzo Fasolo added the structures of the southern front of the Casina, elaborating a fanciful decorative apparatus in Art Nouveau style.
Fasolo’s imprint can be found in the choice of volumes that aggregate and intersect taking shape in a great variety of materials and decorative details. A unifying element of the multiple architectural solutions is the gray tone of the finish layer of the roofs, for which thin slate slabs, variably shaped, were used, contrasted with the lively color of the glazed terracotta tiles.
The interior spaces, arranged over two levels, are all particularly cared for in the finishing works; pictorial decorations, stuccoes, mosaics, polychrome majolicas, inlaid woods, wrought irons, wall fabrics, marble sculptures show the prince’s special attention to living comfort.
Among the many decorations, the presence of stained glass windows is so prevalent as to constitute the distinctive feature of the building: all the stained glass windows were installed between 1908 and 1930 and constitute a “unique” feature in the international artistic panorama, all produced by Cesare Picchiarini’s workshop based on designs by Duilio Cambellotti, Umberto Bottazzi, Vittorio Grassi, and Paolo Paschetto.
The destruction of the building began in 1944, with the occupation by Anglo-American troops, lasting over three years.
When in 1978 the Municipality of Rome acquired the Villa, both the buildings and the park were in disastrous conditions.
The fire of 1991 worsened the degradation conditions of the Casina, together with thefts and vandalism. The current image of the Casina delle Civette is the result of a long, patient, and meticulous restoration work carried out from 1992 to 1997, which, with what is still preserved and based on numerous documentary sources, has allowed the return to the city of one of the most singular and interesting artifacts of the early last century.
