Ceilings of Italy

I recently returned from an intense week of shootng in Italy. I’ve travelled a bit in my life so far, and I’ve also done some urbex abroad, mostly on the spur of the moment when a spot would present itself (it’s how I wound up hanging out with these guys in Tbilisi). However, this trip was my first dedicated almost entirely to exploration, and I managed to not only survive, but not get arrested or injured while getting some pretty decent shots of some great places. This will be the first post in a short series on what I saw in Italy.

I suppose some might wonder why go to Italy for urbex and forgo all the usual sights that typical travelers flock to see? Aren’t there enough mouldering ruins back home in the States? Well, different parts of the world have different architectures, and while European explorers might come here to see our massive rust belt cities, we went to Europe to see some of the numerous crumbling villas and pallazzos that we certainly don’t have here. These ranged from compact manors roughly the size of a large American suburban house to sprawling country estates with chapels and outbuildings. What most shared in common, however, were their resplendent ceilings.

Posh Italians seemed to abhor plain ceilings, and would often decorate them intricately with murals or plaster. This was especially true in the main entry halls, which would be ornately decorated even in cases where all the other rooms were sober white boxes. These halls are calling cards of sorts for these villas among the urbex community; sometimes the only photos of the entire property easily available online are of its main hall. So we’ll start here and make the dazzling old ceilings of Italy the focus of this post.

This was from the only truly urban house we explored; from this room’s balconies you could see the modern skyline of the city center a few miles away. Though pretty decayed and further damaged in a recent fire, this ballroom was very much a “wow” moment.

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Next is a passage leading to a villa’s central courtyard. Even in this space, which is essentially outdoors, money was spent to glam up the barrel vault ceiling.

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This was an example of a property which was quite plain and modern throughout save for this room. It was a former psychiatric facility which had murals of quite a different kind on some of its walls, something which we’ll come back to in a future post.

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This a pretty typical example. Note the painting techniques creating a trompe-l’œil.

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Whimsical parrots perching from a golden gazebo.

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The living room of a notable townhouse. The things to see here were well worth the difficulties of getting in.

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Thank you for stopping by. More Italy coming soon.