GENOESE VILLAS 
ralistic. Not only the natural restrictions of site and soil, 
but the severity of the landscape and the nearness of a 
great city, made it necessary that the Genoese villa- 
architects should produce their principal effects by means 
of masonry and sculpture, rather than of water and ver- 
, dure. The somewhat heavy silhouette of the Genoese 
country houses is thus perhaps partly explained ; for 
where the garden had to be a stone monument, it would 
have been illogical to make the house less massive. 
The most famous of Alessi’s villas lies in the once 
fashionable suburb of Sampierdarena, to the west of 
Genoa. Here, along the shore, were clustered the 
most beautiful pleasure-houses of the merchant princes. 
The greater number have now been turned into tene- 
ments for factory-workers, or into actual factories, while 
the beautiful gardens descending to the sea have been 
cut in half by the railway and planted with cabbages 
and mulberries. Amid this labyrinth of grimy walls, 
crumbling loggias and waste ground heaped with mel- 
ancholy refuse, it is not easy to find one’s way to the 
Villa Imperiali (now Scassi), the masterpiece of Alessi, 
which stands as a solitary witness to the former “ ravish- 
ments” of Sampierdarena. By a happy chance this villa 
has become the property of the municipality, which has 
turned the house into a girls’ school, while the grounds 
are used as a public garden ; and so well have house 
and grounds been preserved that the student of archi- 
tecture may here obtain a good idea of the magnificence 
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