Villino Maffei
A surveyor built this house for himself on the eve of the Art Deco years, and looked backward to do it: pointed arches, brick and salmon-pink render, medallions cut with medieval signs.
At a glance
The Villino Maffei stands on the corner of via Negroponte and via Scutari, in the grid of streets behind the Lido seafront. It was designed in 1921 and finished the following year by the surveyor Dario Maffei, who built it both as his own client and his own architect. The L-shaped house rises three storeys in exposed brick and salmon-pink plaster, with a garden alongside. Its pointed arches and ceramic medallions place it in the Gothic-Venetian and Byzantine revival that ran through the island’s villas.
Key facts
- Designer: Dario Maffei, surveyor (geometra)
- Built: 1921–1922
- Client: Dario Maffei (built for himself)
- Plan: L-shaped, three storeys, about 144 m²
- Style: Gothic-Venetian and Byzantine revival
- Fabric: exposed brick and salmon-pink plaster, hip roof in terracotta on wooden brackets
- Location: via Negroponte 22, corner of via Scutari 25
History
By the early 1920s the Lido had already passed through its first building boom. The grand hotels were up, the seafront was set, and the side streets were filling with the houses of the professional middle class who now lived and summered on the island. The Villino Maffei belongs to that quieter, later chapter.
Its designer, the surveyor Dario Maffei, drew the plans, commissioned the work and took the result for his own family. The project was presented in 1921 and the house was finished in 1922. There is something telling in the choice he made: with the pure Liberty manner already fading toward Art Deco, Maffei reached instead for the Middle Ages, for the Gothic and Byzantine vocabulary that Venice had always kept close.
What you see
The walls alternate exposed brick with stretches of salmon-pink render, and the entrance sits raised above a side stair. Two doors open under pointed arches carried on capitals, the front one framed by a rectangular cornice, set within an architraved loggia that rests on two pilasters and a single column. Above it a small terrace runs behind a parapet of slim balusters.
The windows are the building’s pleasure: single and paired lights under inflected or trilobed arches, some backed by panels of pink plaster, mixed with round oculi and small balconies on brackets. Across the brick, glazed medallions and panels — the patere and formelle of Venetian tradition — carry motifs that deliberately echo the medieval city.
Practical information
- Access: private residence — it can be admired only from the street, not visited inside.
- Best seen: from the via Negroponte corner, where the arched entrance loggia faces the street.
- Time needed: a few minutes; it sits within a short walk of the other Lido villas.
- Setting: a quiet residential grid behind the seafront.
Getting there
From central Venice, take a vaporetto to the Lido Santa Maria Elisabetta landing, then walk inland toward via Negroponte and via Scutari, a few minutes on foot. From Marco Polo Airport, the Alilaguna water bus reaches the Lido directly, or a land transfer to Tronchetto connects with the lagoon vaporetti.
Nearby
- Villino Mon Plaisir — Guido Sullam’s 1904 villa near the Gran Viale.
- Villa Romanelli — Domenico Rupolo’s medieval-revival villa of 1906.
- Villino Faido — Nicolò Piamonte’s villa of 1924, nearby on via Francesco Duodo.
- Liberty and Rationalist Architecture in Venice Lido — a walking route through the island.
Sources
- Comune di Venezia, L’architettura del Lido — synthetic record and building description for Villino Maffei.
- Hero photograph: Wikimedia Commons (author Abxbay), CC BY-SA 4.0.
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