Casa Orlandi (Anacapri)

By Salvatore Di Liello

The history of Casa Orlandi in Anacapri, which has been the headquarters of the International Centre for Scientific Culture of the University of Naples Federico II since 2000, encompasses a series of events that recur in other architectures on the island of Capri: an original rural origin, a subsequent residential purpose suggested by the charming rural dimension of the place, and then successive acquisitions and transfers of ownership that, following the growing popularity of the island during the 19th century, led to the transformation of the buildings, within which those Mediterranean motifs are reinterpreted in light of the so-called Capri style, destined to rewrite the forms and functions of the pre-existing building.
This paradigm, for Casa Orlandi, should be declined in its original presence in the natural elsewhere that Anacapri still was in the 17th century, between the districts of Timpone and Boffe, of some convenient rural properties in the area known as ‘Sellaorta’ where the Teresian nuns of Anacapri, since the last decades of the 17th century, had transformed some lands, creating the conditions for the construction of the complex of San Michele Arcangelo, whose church was consecrated in 1719.
The pre-existing buildings, later transformed during the 18th century into buildings with gardens, probably intended by the Teresians as accommodations for Neapolitan families visiting the nuns, were purchased by Neapolitan Luigi Migiarra around 1782 and sold to Francesco Orlando (later Orlandi) in 1854.
The new owner initiated further works, including the arrangement of the new entrance from the upper part of Via Finestrale, where a colonnaded avenue was built, directly connecting with the upper floor of the residence.
The charm of the place, magnified by the extraordinary view of the Gulf of Naples, made this "small house" - as the inscription on the entrance gate reads - a simple and tranquil residence, which, even with the addition of new rooms, retained its characteristics of simplicity, unlike the more prestigious villas that dotted the island's territory from that time onwards.
Following the initiatives of Francesco Orlando, his son Giuseppe, a provincial councillor of Sorrento, obtained the necessary funding for the construction of the road between Capri and Anacapri, which was built between 1874 and 1877 to connect the two centres of the island, previously connected only by the ancient so-called Phoenician Steps.
Later on, the villa, described in the sources as in decline and inherited by Giulia, Giuseppe's sister, was sold by her in 1925 to the Neapolitan lawyers Gerardo and Agostino Borselli, who, without improving its precarious conditions, sold it to Giorgio Cerio.
The latter entrusted the restoration of the residence to his brother, the famous Edwin, carried out according to his well-known ideas about the protection of the values of the local Caprese tradition, of which the architecture was a remarkable synthesis.
With Cerio's presence at Casa Orlandi, a new season began for the residence, which from that moment became a centre for culture and scientific research, as evidenced by its subsequent uses, first as the Caprese headquarters of the Stockholm Observatory in 1952, and then as a residence for artists in the 1960s when the building was entrusted to the Neapolitan art dealers Lucio Amelio and Pasquale Trisorio, who facilitated the arrival of artists such as Andy Warhol and Jannis Kounellis, among others.
After this period, the serious neglect that later befell the building led to the decision in 1996 by the Capri Ignazio Cerio Centre to grant Casa Orlandi on loan to the University of Naples, which, in agreement with the Ignazio Cerio Centre and the Naples Superintendency, oversaw the restoration and adapted the spaces for a university training laboratory.

From the volume "Passeggiando per la Federico II" (second updated edition) edited by Alessandro Castagnaro - photographs by Roberto Fellicò - FedOAPress