Villino Ruggeri

Pesaro's finest example of Italian Liberty (Art Nouveau) architecture

On Viale della Repubblica near the seafront, the Villino Ruggeri is a small but extravagant Liberty-style villa from 1902, the high point of Italian Art Nouveau. The facade is a riot of organic decoration: sinuous ironwork, floral reliefs in polychrome ceramic, decorative window surrounds, and a tower capped by a female figure with flowing hair. It looks like something that arrived from Vienna or Barcelona and decided to stay.

It is privately owned and not open to the public, but as an exterior it is well worth the short detour from the seafront. The building is at its best in morning light. It sits in a quiet residential street and is easy to miss — worth seeking out deliberately.

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A story
The villa was commissioned by a local merchant, Oreste Ruggeri, and designed by the Venetian architect Giuseppe Brega in 1902. It is one of the few Art Nouveau buildings in the Marche region to have survived intact, and has been listed as a national monument. The female figure on the roof gable is conventionally described as representing "Spring" — but the locals have always called her "the woman on the roof."