15 - Villa Ugolini

Giorgio Ugolini purchased this villa in 1912-13 to turn it into a house-museum. The expansion and progressive transformation of the building took place under the aegis of the owner with the consultancy of Ferruccio Mengaroni. The result is a villa that is an expression of the architectural and decorative eclecticism of the beginning of the century that led in 1935 to the construction, in the garden area towards via Rosselli, of the building intended as the Museum of Ceramics, now destroyed and replaced by a condominium. Adjacent to the museum was Giorgio Ugolini's studio. The ground floor was home to restorers and ceramists. The garden and the loggia housed ancient finds.

The villa shows the triumph of the revival of the beginning of the century, very evident especially in the windows and in the veranda of the first floor, with leaded glass, in the marble floors or in Pompeian red tiles, in the wooden coffered ceilings, in the doors decorated with floral chandeliers, in the marble of the fireplaces, in the red damask of the walls of the first floor, in a majolica panel by Ferruccio Mengaroni, with two facing lions, and in a Venetian floor (still visible in the hall). In 1978-79 the public administration carried out restoration works that modified the interiors, the walls and the floors. From that moment, the villa began to be used for very different purposes, always far from the intentions of its donor: exhibitions and concerts were organized; today unfortunately it is little used.

Today it represents a very important testimony to the eclectic taste that also asserted itself in Pesaro in the early 1900s.