Casa Carbone is not a house museum assembled from scratch: it is the home where the Carbone siblings, Emanuele and Siria, lived to the end, and which in 1987 they gave to the Fondo Ambiente Italiano together with everything inside it. The FAI restored it and opened it to visitors in 2004, putting the objects back where they had stood, so what you get is the portrait of one Ligurian middle-class family of the twentieth century, not an anthology of period furniture.
What to see
The building follows the standard regional construction of the nineteenth century; the interiors, on the other hand, are the fin-de-siècle ones of the local gentry houses, with their share of plasterwork, fabrics and dark furniture. The finest holding is the collection of Wedgwood ceramics, but the best part of the visit lies elsewhere: in the everyday things left in place, the linen folded in the wardrobes, the dinner services, the porcelain dolls.
Emanuele Carbone's study deserves more time than the rest. The owner was a man of wide interests, and it shows in the scientific and astronomical instruments lined up beside the books and magazines he collected: a room that says what it meant to pursue serious curiosity in a private provincial house, with no laboratory or university behind you.
Visiting
Casa Carbone stands in the centre of Lavagna, in the province of Genoa, and is run by the FAI: opening follows the foundation's own calendar, with seasonal days and times, so check before you set out. The visit is short, this is a house and not a palace, and it pairs well with a walk through the town.
Our editors' tip
Our advice is not to treat it as a decorative arts museum. Look at the small things: the labels, the books on the shelves, the way the rooms are laid out. And if you are lucky enough to find it quiet, ask the volunteer on duty about the two Carbones: the story of the bequest, and the decision to leave everything as it was, is the best thing in the house.