Casa Camuzzi

The Casa Camuzzi is a castle-like palazzo in Montagnola (today Collina d'Oro ) in the canton of Ticino with an exotic, terraced park.

Casa Camuzzi, drawn by Gunter Böhmer on Palm Sunday 1978

Casa Camuzzi - south side from the park

Casa Camuzzi - exit to the park

The Casa Camuzzi was built in the middle of the 19th century by the Ticino architect Agostino Camuzzi, who worked for Tsar Nicholas I at the Hermitage . The building, designed in the playful Baroque style of a Russian palace and supplemented with neo-Gothic elements, was completed in 1853.

In the 20th century, the building was inhabited by a number of famous personalities in literature and art: for example, the Nobel Prize winner Hermann Hesse from 1919 to 1931, the painter and book illustrator Gunter Böhmer from 1933 to his death in 1986, and the painter Hans Purrmann from 1944 to 1944 1950 and in the 1970s the Swiss writer Hermann Burger .

A museum located in the Torre Camuzzi is dedicated to Hermann Hesse, who set a monument to the building with his story from Klingsor last summer . The opening took place on the 120th birthday of the poet, July 2, 1997, with the participation of his son Heiner Hesse; Since January 1st, 2000 the Fondazione Hermann Hesse Montagnola has taken over the sponsorship. The tower, which dates from the late Middle Ages, was provided with a multi - storey neo - Gothic loggia by the Camuzzi family at the end of the 19th century and incorporated into their palazzo.

After the death of the last name bearer at the beginning of the 1990s, the building complex was given a non-family owner; it is still privately owned.