Villa Irene

Atika’s eye settles on Villa Irene, an architectural concatenation stretching some seventy metres along the roadside. This is no single, haughty mansion but a linked chain of volumes: garage, laundry, main villa, a greenhouse, a hunting lodge, and finally a church. Each block varies in height, yet all share a single storey above ground, entered directly from the public way.

The walls are of exposed brickwork, honest and unrendered. Floors rest on timber beams and brick vaults; one room is covered by a lunette-topped barrel vault, a touch of formal geometry. The roof is timber-framed, clad in Marseille tiles. A seminterrato links the main building to the lodge. In the park, three ancillary structures serve as garden storage.

It is a country estate that has grown piecemeal, accumulating functions and forms with pragmatic charm, its materials speaking plainly of use rather than display.

Description via source. Coordinates and heritage data from the Atika atlas.