20/03/2021
👉🏼Today’s story CASA CUSENI: the house of the famous author Robert Hawthorn Kitson. 👨🎨
📸Kitson has arrived in Taormina in 1903 and after having visited the site, was so impressed, that he gave orders to start work straight away on what would become his house.🏡
He came from a rich English 🇬🇧industrial family and tired of the oppressive Victorian atmosphere, he decided to escape England and to live in Taormina. 🌍
During the II World War, being English meant that Kitson was forced to leave Italy and the house was requisitioned by the Italian government. Luckily the farmers employed by him buried many of the precious objects he’d lovingly collected throughout his life in the garden, enabling them to be preserved until he could reclaim them.
When Kitson died in 1948 the management of the house was taken on by his niece Daphne Phelps,who came to Sicily with the intention of selling the house. But she fell in love with it and couldn’t do other than to stay and spend the next 50 years taking care of Casa Cuseni 🤩
Daphne Phelps loved to surround herself with artists and thinkers and in order to sustain the enormous costs of the house, she started to rent out a few of the rooms to illustrious guests, among which were many famous artists and intellectuals of the nineteen hundreds like and many others.
The extraordinary story of Casa Cuseni is told in the book A house in Sicily, written by Daphne Phelps in 1999, six years before her death.
☀️Today the house is a museum and an elegant B&B and the whole residential property for its historical and artistic value is safeguarded by the government department responsible for culture treasures in Messina and it is protected by the Victoria and Albert Museum of London.
What a magnificent place to visit and to stay ❣️DM for more info 🤩
Double TAP if you love this place & Follow to explore the most amazing place in Taormina ✨
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