The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
Lord astor’s sorrento home
High above the Bay of Naples, Villa Astor is as beautiful now as it was in its jet-set heyday.
On a narrow street leading to the Marina Grande in the Italian seaside resort of sorrento, birdsong fills the air above an immense garden hidden behind high walls. Pee ring through the wrought-iron gates affords a glimpse of a magnificent villa among the greenery.
Outside t he house, a plaque commemorates the revered Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce, who lived there during the second world war. Very few, however, remember that this coastal idyll was lovingly re designed and inhabited for many years by one of the wealthiest and most extravagant americans ever to have lived.
william waldorf astor – diplomat, financier and property magnate– bought the old villa and its surrounding orchard sand vineyard from the
heirs of a Calabrian nobleman in 1905 for 110,000 lira (or £1 million today). This was hardly a stretch for Astor, who reportedly spent £10 million( around £86 million now) just decorating Hever Castle in Kent.
A month after his initial purchase, he bought the adjoining monastery of Saint Vincenzo, and by September 1905, Astor was already having the villa restored at great expense, adding wainscoting, parquet floors, handpainted ceiling sand vast expanses of marble. A glass-walled dining room was also installed to offer guests unimpeded views of Naples and the island of Ischia.
Astor had the crumbling monastery, its farm buildings and its medieval church torn down (much to the dismay of Sor rento’s residents), and donated the altar piece to a small church in nearby S ant’ Ag nel lo. Statues from a medieval tomb and other marble fragments from the ruins of a Roman villa t hat had been used by Jesuit monks to decorate the church, were displayed in the garden.
Over t he course of severa l yea rs, Astor made further purchases of farmland and small ag ricultural buildings across the street from his villa, where he built a swimming pool and cult i- vated citrus groves and olive orchards.
In 1910, he bought a parcel of land between the villa and the neighbouring Syrene Hotel (a favourite of wellheeled British and American visitors), which became the site of a replica Pompei an pavilion. The folly’ s frescoed interiors – painted by the Roman artist Mario Spinetti, known for his mythological subjects – and rich mosaic floors were so deftly rendered that guests assumed they were originals from Pompeii or Herculaneum.
Overtime, Astor created an elaborate botanical garden around his 16- room villa, and filled both with classical antiquities and Renaissance artwork sofa quality unequalled by any other 20th-century collection. He wintered in Sorrento until the outbreak of
A glass-walled dining room was installed to offer guests unimpeded views of Naples and the island of Ischia
t he First World War prevented him from travelling across Europe.
Following Astor’s death in 1919, the Italian government declared that, due to their cultural significance, the sculpture collections and gardens should be be protected and stay attached to the villa. Then, during the Second World War, the property was requisitioned by the British and American occupying forces as a command centre. As a result, the villa survived the Allied bombing of the Bay of Naples unscathed, while many buildings nearby were reduced to rubble.
In the 1970s, Villa Astor was bought by the shipping magnate Mariano Pane and his wife Rita, a renowned society hostess, who transformed the house into one of the most glamorous properties on the Amalfi coast once more. For over 30 years, the Pane family hosted the international jet set: royalty (Princess Margaret) and world leaders (President Giscard d’estaing) rubbed shoulders with stars of stage (Rudolf Nureyev) and screen( Gregory Peck) on the
sun-drenched terraces overlooking the Bay of Naples. Precisely placed windows frame the garden’ s views of the constantly changing silhouette of Vesuvius, hidden by clouds one instant, clearly visible the next.
The villa’ s current owners commissioned French interior designer Jacques Garcia to restore the villa to its former splendour. Garcia creates luxurious interiors for private homes and hotels, and has overseen the restoration of many historical buildings, including the Palace of Versailles.
At Villa As tor, he has created a timelessly beautiful setting for the property’ s magnificent collection of antiquities. Garcia has managed to preserve the elegance of Astor’s day, while bringing the property into the 21st century. It is indeed a paradise restored. Villa Astor: Paradise Restored on the Amalfi Coast by Curt Di Camillo is published by Flammarion (£45). To order your copy for £40 plus free p&p, call 0844-8711514 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk