Villa Tigullio e Parco Casale

East of Rapallo's harbour, Villa Tigullio stands in Parco Casale, a public park of lawns, plantings and birdlife. The villa houses the city's international library and lace museum.

Why it matters

Rapallo's commune bought the Villa Tigullio estate in 1974, converting a private seaside residence into a civic cultural centre. The park preserves plantings and birdlife; the villa contains the international library and lace museum. The estate combines a historic residence, a public garden and cultural institutions beside the sea.

What to notice

The park contains mature trees, plant species and birdlife. From the lawn, the villa faces the Gulf of Tigullio and the Portofino promontory. The building's civic functions include a library and lace museum. The estate's seventeenth-century residence and twentieth-century collections bring together different periods of Rapallo's history.

Context and history

The Metropolitan City of Genoa's heritage inventory traces the villa to the seventeenth century, built by the Spinola family as a residence and seaward bastion. The commune dates it to the mid-seventeenth century, while the Touring Club dates the present structure to the late eighteenth century, suggesting a Spinola origin substantially reworked later. Ownership passed from the Spinola to the Serra family, and a change of owner in the mid-nineteenth century brought large restoration works. In the early twentieth century the villa was the luxurious residence of wealthy English families, part of the foreign colony that shaped Rapallo's Belle Époque season.

The turning point came in 1974, when the commune acquired the complex and made the surrounding Parco Casale a public park. The house became the seat of the Biblioteca Internazionale "Città di Rapallo", with an estimated 46,000 volumes in Italian, English, French, German, Russian and Spanish, and of the Museo del Merletto, whose tombolo lace collection documents local craft. The FAI listed the villa among places at risk, and it received public nominations in the "I Luoghi del Cuore" campaign in 2020 and 2022.