Travelling to Pistoia on the road from San Marcello to Le Piastre one crosses the Oppio pass, 2693 feet high. Near the top of this pass there’s the wreck of a formerly fabulous liberty-style villa which is called Villa Bellesi and is inexorably falling into unredeemable ruin. Once its roof is further damaged there’s not much hope left.

It’s so sad; unfortunately Italy is full of these marvelous buildings just decaying away because they don’t happen to be ancient roman or renaissance or any other listed style.

From what I was able to gather the Villa Bellesi is in its present state because of a long drawn out inheritance squabble (inevitably!) between two sisters. I wish there was an offence called crime against architecture for the building is an exquisite example of art nouveau chalet-style and has gorgeous Ginori tiles decorating its exterior.

The interior was still accessible, though somewhat perilous, when I visited it ten years ago. I wonder if the staircase is still holding up. Someone already then had helped themselves to the bannisters. I can only guess at what they looked like.

I passed by the villa last year but found all its entrances and windows bricked up so was unable to access the interior.

The Villa Bellesi would make a superb large family residence or a boutique hotel: it’s situated in a splendid area of the Apennines within an hour’s drive of both Pistoia with its mediaeval wonders and San Marcello Pistoiese, a popular summer resort for the heat-stifled Florentines.

Italy’s unlisted ruins include not only rotting aristocratic edifices but also lunatic asylums, abandoned prisons, plague hospitals, mortuaries, failed factories and even whole deserted villages. Who wants them? Are there any persons out there brave enough to love any of these relicts anew?

Here’s a start. This is what the villa Bellesi used to be like one hundred years ago: