GROTTOS: PLACES OF ENCHANTMENT

Villa Viscaya, Coconut Grove, Florida

QuarryHouse just completed the monumental restoration and reimagining of a 1920’s Renaissance-style mansion in San Francisco that includes a fanciful stone grotto.  Out of respect for the NDA, the dream team of Tucker & Marks, Skurman Architects, and QuarryHouse can not share the magical grotto images. We can visit other places of enchantment.  

Villa Viscaya, in Coconut Grove, Florida, designed in the Mediterranean Revival architecture style, features a swimming pool grotto. Businessman James Deering built the historic estate in 1916. He commissioned American artist Robert Winthrop Chanler to create a surreal ceiling mural depicting sea creatures and marine life embedding seashells into the plaster. Deering may have only used the pool once.  

Villa Borromeo Visconti Litta, Lainate, Italy

Pirro I Visconti Borromeo's late 16th-century Nymphaeum (Nymph's Cave) at his Villa Litta in the Milanese countryside contains a litany of grottos. Designed by architect Martino Bassi, each chamber showcases Greek styled statues set against a baroque backdrop of tuff stone stalactites and mosaics encrusted with colored river pebbles and seashells. Just as the Nymphaeum's ethereal beauty seduces the viewer, they are surprised by hidden hydraulics and playful water features.

Venus Grotto, Linderhof Palace, Ettal, Germany

Ludwig II of Bavaria, who loved Wagner and fantasy, built the Venus Grotto at his Versailles, influenced Linderhof Palace. Constructed in 1877 by court building director Georg Dollmann and landscape sculptor August Dirigl, the flowstone cave with its underground lake and waterfall depicts the 1st act of the opera "Tannhäuser." A place of refuge for the reclusive Ludwig, he sat in a shell-shaped Lorelei rock and a gilt boat while watching the illumination on the water change colors. Sadly the king was declared insane in 1886, dying under mysterious circumstances at Lake Starnberg.