Villa Freischütz House Museum

In 1909, a villa was built in a prime location in Maia Alta. This grand building doesn't showcase the Art Nouveau style like many other buildings in the spa town, but rather the Heimatschutzstil - a style of architectural modernism - prevalent in the first half of the 20th century.

The villa, nestled within its park amongst trees and shrubs, is barely visible from the Via Priami, the road that runs alongside it. However, it houses a remarkable exhibition: the art collection of Franz Fromm, who acquired the house in 1922. Fromm, a Prussian wine merchant, harboured a passion for artwork from around the globe. He died in 1941 at Villa Freischütz in Merano.

His granddaughter, Rosamaria Navarini (1926-2013), bequeathed the villa and its art collection to the Navarini-Ugarte Foundation, which now operates the museum. It displays everyday objects from the period between 1922 and 1941, including board games and household ledgers, as well as artworks such as paintings by Ellen Tornquist and Georg Greve Lindau. The villa itself is also worth seeing: The high-ceilinged rooms, the splendid terrazzo floors, the Asian wallpaper, and the furniture from all over the world create a captivating atmosphere.

The villa is surrounded by the lush "Garden of Living Silence", which you can also visit. In 2024, the Villa Freischütz House Museum (Hausmuseum Villa Freischütz) was nominated, alongside the Museo Giovanni Poleni in Padua, as one of two Italian museums for the European Museum of the Year Award, the "Oscar of the museum world". How to get there: Pedestrian access is located in the Via Priami or Via Belvedere roads in Maia Alta, and a bus stop is a five-minute walk away. It's also about a five-minute walk from the underground car park at the Piazza Fontana square.