Two marble flights drop from the projecting central bay of the facade and trace a U in plan. This is the pincer staircase of Villa Pratola, the most original element of the whole composition, and it points straight at the state road 62 della Cisa, the old Roman road. The villa stands at Madonnetta, in the hamlet of Ponzano Magra, and began as a country lodge built by the Remedi family of Sarzana in the first decades of the eighteenth century: the same years in which the Remedi were investing in the fief of Ponzano Superiore, then a community with statutes of its own, and in the farmland at its foot.
What to see
The main front faces north-east and is pure eighteenth-century Baroque: parapets with a serpentine profile along the two flights, and an attic wall that repeats the same curve and closes the outline of the building. Marble vases run along the front, together with a crowning device bearing the Remedi coat of arms. The rest of the block does the opposite: rectangular plan, smooth plaster, no ornament at all. The contrast is deliberate, and it concentrates the whole theatrical effect on the entrance.
The marble balcony carried by two Doric columns is a Neoclassical addition, most probably made in the nineteenth century; the north wing, mirroring the one to the south, and the completion of the garden belong to the same period. Both side wings started life as farm buildings. The garden follows the climate of the lower Magra valley: cypresses, lemon trees, rosemary, several kinds of palm, Mediterranean pine, geraniums, an Atlas cedar and box hedges, with olives and vines in the fields around. The earthquake that struck the Lunigiana in 1920 brought down part of the floors, later rebuilt; the recent restoration respected the protection order placed on the villa in 1934 by the heritage office in Genoa.
Visiting
Ponzano Magra lies on the Cisa road between Santo Stefano di Magra and Sarzana, and the villa comes up right at the roadside: facade and staircase can be read in full from the road, which remains the most natural viewpoint. It is a private residence, listed among the Italian historic houses, and the interiors keep no regular opening hours: chances to see them come with events and special open days. By train the useful station is Sarzana, a few kilometres to the south.
Our editors' tip
Look at the staircase head-on first, then move a few paces to one side: the curved parapets redraw themselves with every step, which is exactly the effect they were built for. Come early in the morning, when the light rakes in from the north-east and the garden is full of blackbirds and doves. Then drive up to Ponzano Superiore, the Remedi hill village: from up there you understand why the villa ended up where it did, at the foot of the fief and in the middle of the fields.