From Stockholm to Sanremo, from the freezing cold of Sweden to the Mediterranean climate of the Riviera di Ponente. Alfred Nobel, known above all for being the creator and founder of the Nobel Prize, the one who invented dynamite in 1867, by now almost sixty, he had chosen to live in Italy, on the Ligurian Riviera. And he had bought a villa in Sanremo that still bears his name today. Elegant, imposing, a little eccentric, it is surrounded by a splendid garden that extends to the sea. About six thousand square meters full of precious plants, some particularly rare, important evidence of the Mediterranean scrub that distinguishes the Italian coasts. In this park there is, among others, a very high cypress tree used as an ornamental plant and under which there is an ancient cannon. When Alfred Nobel lived in this Sanremo villa, he used it for his experiments on the range of weapons. And in this villa he had equipped a laboratory which he used for his experiments.
The Swedish chemist lived in Sanremo the last years of his life
The one inhabited by the Swedish chemist who was also an entrepreneur and a philanthropist is still a splendid building. It had been built, based on a project by the architect Filippo Grossi, in 1871 for a Turin pharmacist. Already three years later it had been put up for sale and purchased by a Genoese knight. in 1891 new change of ownership. This time it was Alfred Nobel who bought it. No longer young and with the need, also for health reasons, to live in a mild climate like that of the Ligurian coast. This is the story up to Nobel. The Swedish chemist, due to the important fame that still accompanies him today, and perhaps also because he lived here until the end of his life, is the one who gave the villa its name.
Un historic building in Moorish style, particular from its design. And that Nobel, once purchased, had it modified with a restoration intervention. The villa was raised by one floor, thus modifying the central structure of the roof. The outward appearance, however, remained very close to that of the original design. The interior was also reinterpreted following the fashion of that neo-colonial style so much in vogue at the end of the XNUMXth century. Here Alfred Nobel found, and built himself, the right environment to study and experiment by spending the last years of his life immersed in the scents of the Riviera. "My nest”, So he had decided to call her. He died six years after the purchase, in 1897, at the age of only 63. And in the Sanremo villa the funeral ceremony was also celebrated, officiated by a pastor of the Swedish embassy in Paris, his close friend.
When the Ligurian Ponente attracted the beautiful world of northern Europe
Villa Nobel tells the story of an era, when the Ligurian west attracted, between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, important personalities of science, literature and the beautiful world of the time. After the death of Alfred Nobel and various changes of ownership, the villa was sold at the end of the sixties of the last century to the Autonomous Tourist Office of Sanremo and then to the province of Imperia which has made it a prestigious seat of representation and important cultural events. The villa houses furniture that belonged to the scientist: his study, the library, a living room, the bedroom.
It also hosts a permanent exhibition, Discover the nineteenth century, where the use of dynamite in the civil field is illustrated and where, among the many curiosities, the other Nobel patents are described. There are also portraits of the Nobel laureates Italians and the list of all Nobel Prizes since 1901, as well as a reproduction of the scientist's laboratory. Precisely in this luxurious Sanremo residence Alfred Nobel wrote his famous testament in which he decided to institute the prize that bears his name. Probably the result of an inner process that led him to review the past with the aim of leaving a good memory of himself by focusing on man and his results in the various fields of knowledge.
(featured photo credits: Villa Nobel Fb page)
