La renovation of the entire complex, which included a small casino (the current Museum) and a coffee-house (today’s Villa Lucia) and the Park was entrusted to the architect Antonio Niccolini who worked on it from 1817 to 1819.
Niccolini, as can be seen from the autograph plan kept at the Museum of San Martino, conceived a building with a rectangular central body and two perpendicular and symmetrical wings, facing north. In addition, he added at the central entrance of the building a small porticoed area for the stop of carriages, an architectural solution already adopted for the San Carlo Theatre.
For the southern facade, which was on three levels due to the marked slope of the ground, Niccolini developed a lava stone base for the basement floor with a marble double-flight staircase, which 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 numerous transformations by the heirs until 1919, the year in which the Villa was purchased by the State and destined to museum use.
The Duca di Martina Museum has been home since 1931 to one of the largest Italian collections of decorative arts, including over six thousand works of Western and Eastern manufacture, dating from the 12th to the 19th century, whose largest core is made up of ceramics.
The collection, which gives the Museum its name, was established 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 an illustrious family closely linked to the Bourbon court, after the unification of Italy moved to Paris, where he began to acquire applied art objects, coming into contact with the greatest European collectors and participating in the great universal exhibitions.
In 1881 his only son died and the entire collection was inherited in 1891 by his namesake nephew, Count of the Marsi, who, through his wife Maria Spinelli di Scalea, donated it in 1911 to the city of Naples.
The Museum develops over three floors, on the ground floor are exhibited, in addition to some paintings, ivories, enamels, tortoises, corals and bronzes from the medieval and Renaissance periods, Renaissance and Baroque majolica and glasses and crystals from the 15th-18th centuries, furniture, caskets and furnishings. On the first floor is the collection of 18th century European porcelains, consisting of groups from the most important manufactories of the eighteenth century, Meissen, Doccia, Naples and Capodimonte, French, German and English porcelains. Finally, in the basement, the section of oriental art objects has been set up, among which the collection of Chinese porcelains from the Ming (1368-1644) Qing (1644-1911) and Japanese Kakiemon and Imari periods is remarkable.
Niccolini, taking advantage of the natural slope of the land descending towards the sea, redesigned the external areas, alternating large lawns and flower beds with scenic backdrops to ‘grove’ areas and steep terraces.
Instead, for the areas surrounding the main building he adopted more regular and symmetrical solutions, in accordance with the stylistic characteristics of neoclassical taste. He also devised an open-air theater, an Ionic temple, greenhouses and some caves for exotic animals: the only architectural elements still existing today in the current area of the Park, which allow to perceive the original picturesque atmosphere.
