Grand Hotel Campo dei Fiori

The Grand Hotel Campo dei Fiori in Varese is a hotel located on Mount Tre Croci, in the northern area of ​​the Varese municipality. Designed in 1908 by Giuseppe Sommaruga, it was very active in the first half of the twentieth century and represents, for its structure and furnishings, a notable example of Italian liberty. Closed in 1968, it is still in a state of neglect today. It was opened on the occasion of the centenary of the death and 150th of the birth of the architect Giuseppe Sommaruga. The national cultural association ITALIA LIBERTY organized an exhibition in collaboration with the property and the Fai (Fondo Ambiente Italiano) curated by Andrea Speziali and Vittorio Sgarbi in honor of the designer Sommaruga, one of the greatest architects of Italian modernism. See monograph "Giuseppe Sommaruga (1867-1917). A progragonist of Liberty", edited by A. Speziali, CartaCanta publisher 2017.

The Grand Hotel Campo dei Fiori in Varese is a hotel located on Mount Tre Croci, in the northern area of ​​the Varese municipality. Designed in 1908 by Giuseppe Sommaruga, it was very active in the first half of the twentieth century and represents, for its structure and furnishings, a notable example of Italian liberty. Closed in 1968, it is in a semi-abandoned state in 2017.
In the first decade of the twentieth century, the Varese area had become a popular summer holiday destination. One of the favorite places for tourists was Mount Campo dei Fiori, which offered the peace and charm of wild mountain nature not far from the city center of Varese. Various private individuals therefore decided to build, on the southern slope of the mountain, various villas, mostly in the architectural style then most in vogue, the liberty.
Thanks to the simultaneous development of the transport network (funicular and tramways), in 1907 some entrepreneurs, interested in investing in tourism in Varese and Campo dei Fiori, decided to set up the Società Anonima dei Grandi Alberghi Varesini and commissioned the architect Giuseppe Sommaruga, one of the greatest exponents of Italian liberty, to design buildings for hospitality purposes, some of which to be built in the area of ​​Monte Tre Croci. Specifically, a 30-room hotel (which would later become the Belvedere restaurant), the funicular stations and another 200-room hotel (the Grand Hotel), very luxurious, were commissioned.
The construction site began in 1910 and ended in 1912, while the restaurant and the funicular (which was given to the management of the Varese Society for Electric Companies) came into operation some time before.
For the construction of the complex, ingenious construction and plant engineering solutions were used, including mines and charges of dynamite to dig the rock, and the overall intervention profoundly changed the landscape of the area, since a large garden was built around the buildings. After its opening, for about half a century the complex was the destination of a great flow of elite tourism, interrupted only by the two world wars. In 1947 a fire devastated the top floor, which was hastily repaired with a prefabricated structure. In 1958, with the closure of the funicular, the decline of the tourist flow began and, towards 1968, the hotel and restaurant closed their doors.
In the following twenty years the hotel, thanks to the total lack of interest of the owners and the negligence of the caretakers, was gradually stripped of many pieces of period furniture (some of enormous value), of which only a part was saved. Presumably around the 1980s (but there are no reliable sources in this regard), the prefabricated attic planted in 1947 was replaced by a more robust masonry roof covered with bituminous sheaths and copper sheets (or similar material), still present in 2017.
Despite the deterioration, the hotel area has retained considerable charm and is still a destination for onlookers, enthusiasts, art students and hikers who use the surrounding paths to climb to the hotel and the mountain behind.