Villa Farragiana a Meina, 19th-century Neoclassical villa in Meina, Italy
Villa Farragiana is a 19th-century Neoclassical residence on the shores of Lake Maggiore in Meina, distinguished by its lakeside facade with a columned portico and grand interior staircase. The building displays eleven marble medallions of celebrated Italian figures carved above its windows, along with an allegorical sculpture of Fame set in the pediment above the central entrance.
Alessandro Farragiana commissioned the building in 1855 following designs by architect Antonio Bussero for use as a summer retreat. In 1949, a religious community from Bergamo received the property as a gift and adapted it to serve as a care facility.
Raffaele Faraggiana, a senator, had a chalet-museum built in 1889 to house the family's ethnographic collection gathered by explorer Ugo Ferrandi and Alessandro Faraggiana on their travels. It held taxidermied animals and artefacts, and servants kept park and museum ready for visitors from Meina and nearby villages. The collection is now at Novara's natural history museum.
The villa stands above the Piedmont shore of Lake Maggiore between Meina and Arona, its lake-facing facade visible from the road and waterfront below. The museum area, with the 1889 chalet-museum, the former laundry building and the greenhouses with their belvedere turret, was acquired by the Comune in 2009 and reopened as Museo Meina in 2015; the Antiche Serre reopened in 2018. The villa itself belongs to a real-estate company and is not open to visitors.
The villa's grounds once held a private ethnographic and natural-history collection assembled by explorer Ugo Ferrandi and Alessandro Faraggiana on their travels. Raffaele Faraggiana had a Liberty-style chalet-museum built for it in 1889, enlarged in 1904. The collection later moved to Novara's Faraggiana Ferrandi natural history museum, and the chalet now houses Museo Meina.
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