A Visit to Villa Pignatelli

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The streets were full of people selling small bunches of mimosa today for International Women’s Day.

Mimosa on the streets of Naples

If you want to take a break near the Palazzo Reale in Naples, head to the cafe in the Teatro San Carlo (we had an excellent guided tour of the theatre last week). The surroundings are refined, the seating, in sumptuous leather sofas, is very comfortable, if not worn, and the cappuccino, only €1.50 a cup (the average here is about €2 – 3.00 a cup). Best of all, we had a pianist at a grand piano playing soothing music. A proper oasis of calm after the busy, noisy and crowded streets outside.

Tempted as we were to stay in the cafe listening to the music, we stirred ourselves to continue with our plans for the day.

Villa Pignatelli is a nineteenth century grand house first built for Sir Ferdinand Richard Acton, son of Sir John Acton, a former prime minister of Naples, and was left to the state by the last owner in the 1950’s.

Entrance
Ballroom
Room off the ballroom ‘for the orchestra players’ with ‘pink wax walls’ .
The Pompeian Room was for guests to ‘arrange their hair and clothes’ when there were parties. A great idea, but not so convenient when you had to go through the room for the orchestra players to get there. The decorations in this room were inspired by finds in Pompeii and were all the rage in the mid-nineteenth century.

The Blue Room

The Red Room
You’ve guessed it – The Green Room
The Dining Room

In the dining room, each place was laid with a knife, a fork, and a spoon, which makes your choice of cutlery pretty simple. However, we saw examples of menus with several courses. What was one supposed to do? Keep back the cutlery when your plate was taken away at the end of one course, so you could use it for the next?

The choice of glassware was more complex. Each person had six glasses. What were they all for? I’m guessing champagne, white wine, red wine, dessert wine, port and water.

The Place Settings (My grandmother would have horrified at the state of the silver. It really needed a good polish).
Example menus. See ‘Roastbeef a l’Anglaise’ on the first menu. Why do we always get ribbed for our English food? On another menu I saw, ‘Salad d’oeuf a l’Anglaise’. Now I didn’t realise that was an English speciality.


The stairs were surprisingly under-stated given the grandness of the rest of the house.


This bath was huge. You can see the gold taps. The water came out of the fishes’ mouths.

His and her basins in the bathroom.

Our tour of the grand rooms ended here, there being no bedrooms to see, but we did go outside to the ‘English Garden’.

Lovely palm trees – I wonder if the garden designer had ever been to England. We also saw a banana tree.

In the grounds we visited a large collection of horse-drawn carriages. No pictures of these I am afraid, but I was intrigued by the following notice next to a display of what looked like hunting horns.

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Published by tortoisesontour

My husband, Mark, and I have just sold our house and are taking a year out to have an adventure before we settle down to retirement. We decided on a journey through Italy as it has the perfect combination of good weather, interesting history, great wine and wonderful ice-cream! As we will be starting our journey in January, we are beginning in the very south of the country.

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