Villetta di Negro

In 1948 the Municipality of Genoa approves the construction of the building for the Museum Chiossone on the site of the Villa of the Marquis Di Negro, built in 1802 to designs by Barabino, and destroyed by bombing during the Second World War. The construction of the new building, a rationalist project, heavily inspired by Japanese traditional architecture, began in 1953 but suffered countless delays due also to the disappearance of the designer in `61. Only in April 1967, the City made responsible for setting up the exhibition space the engineer Grossi Bianchi, in collaboration with the then director of the Fine Arts, Catherine Macenaro. The building was reopened to the public in 1971, is home to the extraordinary heritage of Japanese art and oriental collected at the end of '800 by Edoardo Chiossone in Japan: large sculptures, enamels, ceramics, lacquer, porcelain, weapons and armor, polychrome prints, musical instruments, theatrical masks, costumes and textiles, bronzes and paintings from different eras. Even the old nineteenth-century residence, however, was characterized by a high concentration of art and antiquities collected as a Negro writer and patron of time, becomes the core of frequent entertainments attended by intellectuals and cultural contexts to which Italian and foreign artists . At his death, the entire complex was sold to the City that decided to allocate it to the seat of several institutions museums.