Every year a ‘luogo del cuore’ (place in one’s heart) campaign is launched  by FAI, the Italian conservation body, in which people vote for a building or place worthy of protection from the ravages of time.

A friend had recently been campaigning hard to save Bagni di Lucca’s magnificent Villa Ada in the old part of the town on the hill.

Originally a late Renaissance structure owned by the De Nobili Lucchese family, the Villa Ada was completely renovated in the nineteenth century, by Sir MacBean British consul at Livorno, when the two tall hexagonal towers were built giving the villa its present characteristic appearance. The building is surrounded by a large English-style park, enriched by artificial limestone caves, wrought iron railings in the shape of intertwined branches, and other elements of garden furniture typical of the period.

A path, starting from the terrace near the villa, leads to a pergola and continues towards an artificial cave.

The villa, purchased in 1975 by the Municipality of Bagni di Lucca, was used as a spa treatment establishment. Today, however, the villa is abandoned, with obvious structural problems due to poor maintenance.

Regretfully the citizens of Bagni di Lucca, through lack of interest, couldn’t muster sufficient votes needed for a building to qualify for preservation and appropiate funding for its restoration.

Yesterday, on a beautifully serene winter afternoon such as we have been blessed for some days now at Bagni di Lucca, I decided with two friends to venture into urban exploration of the interior of the Villa Ada. (Clearly, we will not divulge how we entered as we do not wish to encourage further vandalism).

What we experienced was a scene of sad dilapidation, of melancholic abandonment, of rapid deterioration extending to the beginning of the collapse of part of the ceiling of the top floor.

We also saw the site where at least two marvellous marble eighteenth century fireplaces had been ripped out and were now lost in a sordid international black market.

Before the theft of a fireplace in 2013:

Where the fireplace was, now:

We were, however, relieved to note that the magnificently carved wooden balustrade of the grand staircase spanning three floors was still in relatively complete state, although several of its corner finials had either been removed or were partially complete.

We were also thankful that the opulent marble floors of many rooms were still intact and that the herring-bone terracotta floor of one grand salon was complete.

What struck me most in our exploration of the forlornly decrepit majesty of Villa Ada was its sheer size and the impressiveness of its state rooms despite the fact that there was little evidence of the decoration that once must have adorned its walls and nothing of the furnishings remained.

What stately occasions must have taken place in the Villa Ada’s belle-époque heyday! What elegance of powdered and perfumed ladies, trailing their chiffon and silk skirts down the monumental staircase. What waltzes, quadrilles and polkas danced to the mellifluous sounds of a salon orchestra? What grand banquets, what delicious spreads of canapés, what excellences of wines. What gossips and courtesies, what merriments, what intrigues, what secret flirtations, what words of love or censure, what plots hatched, what dreams realised and what hopes dashed in this havishamesque cobweb of an age  passed away into the sands of time?

Surely, surely there must come one fine day for a knight in shining armour  (or a Russian oligarch or Chinese Trillionaire) to awaken the sleeping beauty of  Villa Ada before it is finally enveloped in the mists of time, the strangling brambles of its garden and the evanescence of faithless memory…