Museum on the carillon will open near Treviso in a beautiful 18th-century villa and display a unique collection

The first Italian museum dedicated to music boxes, the Villa Lattes Museum, will open on May 26, 2018: some 30 unique automata made between the 18th and 20th centuries and coming from Italy, France, Germany, and Switzerland will in fact be housed in the 18th-century Villa Lattes, located in Istrana, near Treviso. The collection aims to document all aspects of the mechanical reproduction of music: thus, space will be given to the carillon, the “monferrina” (an instrument that associates the carillon mechanism with the structure of the organ), the harmonium and various automata, such as the Tamburino, an automaton from the second half of the 18th century that wears the uniform of the Republic of Venice, a unique piece in the world.

The venue that houses the collection is, as mentioned, Villa Lattes, built around 1715 to a design by Giorgio Massari (Venice, 1687 - Venice, 1766): the Venetian architect’s first major work, it was commissioned by the Venetian merchant Paolo Tamagnino and, in its façade, shows obvious suggestions derived from an interpretation of the Baroque and Barocchetto styles. The villa was then purchased in 1842 by Abramo Bruno Lattes, a member of a family of merchants of Israelite origin, and remained in the family’s ownership until 1953, when the last owner, lawyer Bruno Lattes, passed away, who arranged for the villa to remain in the hands of the City of Treviso. In 2004 the villa was purchased by the Municipality of Istrana, which began its restoration, costing 1,750,000 euros, of which 1,450,000 was financed by the Veneto Region: the interventions also faithfully recreated some of the interiors, such as the central hall with its lacquered and gilded Louis XVI-style furniture, the kitchen with its hearth and collection of copper cookware, the guest room with its early 19th-century furnishings, and the bathroom of the period.

Bruno Lattes himself was the owner of the collection of music boxes displayed in the rooms of the villa: it is one of the richest in Europe. In his autobiography entitled Memoirs of an Optimistic Lawyer, Lattes, we read in the museum’s presentation, “expressed a desire to want to collect what was joyous and burlesque that had cheered his life and to omit what had been painful and inauspicious. His collection of musical objects reflects his passion for music, cultivated from a young age by dabbling in the cello.” In 1953, Lattes welcomed one of the foremost experts on mechanisms, Alfred Chapuis, author of the treatise Histoire de la Boîte à Musique et de la Musique mécanique, to the villa: Chapuis, who visited the villa and the collection along with Enrico Morpurgo, said that the Lattes collection collected unique items that he could not even imagine existed.

The museum will be open Thursday through Sunday with the following hours: Thursdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., Fridays from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., Saturdays from 9 a.m. to noon and 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., and Sundays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. Admission: full 5 euros, reduced 3 euros. The museum app will also be available soon. For more information you can visit the museum’s website: www.museovillalattes.it.

Museum on the carillon will open near Treviso in a beautiful 18th-century villa and display a unique collection

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