Viareggio, five Liberty buildings on the seafront

The fire, and what came after it

In 1917 a fire swept the wooden promenade of Viareggio, the line of bath-houses, cafés and shops that had grown along the beach since the end of the nineteenth century. The town rebuilt in masonry, and in 1924 a government commission that included the architect Alfredo Belluomini, the engineer Ugo Giusti and the painter Galileo Chini set the style of the new seafront. What stands today is the result: a row of buildings that are not grand, not monumental, but coherent, and all of them within a kilometre of each other. This walk takes five of them.

The shopfront from before the fire

Start at the Negozio Martini on Viale Regina Margherita, beside the Gran Caffè Margherita. It was built in 1899 to a design by Modesto Orzali, with ceiling decorations by Tito Chini, and it belongs to the generation before the fire. The wooden building was hit by bombing in 1944 and rebuilt in 1947 in simplified form; what you see is that reconstruction, five bays of wooden pilasters on a marble base, and it is still a shop.

A few doors on, the Magazzini Duilio 48 of 1927–1930 is the department store of the reconstruction. The designer’s name has been lost, but the language is unmistakable: pilasters dividing the front into bays, curved windows turning the corner, wrought-iron railings, oval glass signs, and the interlaced 48 still riding above the door.

Majolica by the sea

The Bagno Balena is one of the historic bathing establishments of the seafront, and its name, the whale, is a survivor of the beach’s long bathing tradition. What makes it architecture is the entrance: a masonry gateway built in 1928 to a design by Belluomini and covered in the glazed majolica of Galileo Chini. It is the clearest statement of the Liberty taste along the rebuilt seafront, and it is a good place to see what colour does to a building by the sea.

Turn inland for Villa Argentina, an 1868 villa remade in 1926 in the Liberty taste, with the transformation attributed to Belluomini. Galileo Chini supplied the majolica; the Sardinian painter Giuseppe Biasi filled the ballroom with a painted Persian wedding, the spouses carried on elephants. The villa belongs to the Province of Lucca and is open for exhibitions.

The two towers

The walk ends at the Grand Hotel Royal on Viale Carducci. The old Palazzo Nelli was remade in 1925 by Belluomini into a hotel with twin towers and a façade dressed in Chini’s ceramics; it faces the sea at the southern end of the promenade and it is the largest building of the group. Look at the fountain in front and then at the towers: the composition is symmetrical, and it was designed to be seen from the beach.

Four of the five stops are on the seafront, within 200 metres of each other; Villa Argentina is about a kilometre inland. The whole route is 2.3 kilometres and about two hours, with time to look. Morning or late afternoon is best, when the light comes in from the sea and the majolica reads clearly. The full route is on the Walking Tour in Viareggio page.