Along the shores of Biscayne Bay in the Miami neighborhood of Coconut Grove lies an intriguing destination couple of persons are likely associate with the high glamour of Miami. It is the Villa Vizcaya, a modest piece of Europe transported and produced American by a wealthy Chicago industrialist back in 1916. James Deering, significantly enamored of his own Grand Tour via Europe, and in certain, the villas of Italy, decided to produce his own villa as a winter retreat in Florida.
At the time Deering began Vizcaya, the population of Miami was small additional than 10,000 people, hardly the busy metropolis it has grown to be. Looking for to produce his own version of an Italianate villa with working farm and gardens on an estate of even more than 180 acres (of which only 28 acres remain as the Vizcaya of these days), Deering brought in Italian craftsman by the hundreds to work alongside Bahamians to make a one of a kind home and set of gardens that employed practically 1,000 individuals in its construction over a period of five years.
Especially notable was the addition of landscape designer Diego Suarez, a Colombian-born landscape architect who was trained in Florence and transported the concept of formal Italian gardens to Vizcaya. Like a lot of Miami right now, the gardens had been developed to be part of outdoor living, an environment to host parties as nicely as provide quiet moments for reading. These days, the gardens stay the most awe-inspiring part of Vizcaya, with lush local plantings, hidden grottoes, open air pavilions for tea parties, as well as a boat launch along the bay lined with statues that evokes a scene straight out of a Venetian opera.
This is not to underplay the dazzle of the 70-room home itself. Today, visitors can enjoy examining about half of the villa's rooms, as well as wandering freely outdoors. The Villa Vizcaya was an advanced house for its time, in spite of the echoes of Renaissance Italy. It had 1 of the first elevators in the United States and was created to have an open courtyard in the center of the house to facilitate the breezes off the bay. The opulent decor of Vizcaya incorporates luxurious European decorative arts, as well as antique ceilings, paneling, fireplaces, and doors all purchased in Europe and transported to Miami for use at Vizcaya.
The villa's collection of art would rival any museum. Visitors today can see Deering's impressive connoisseurship in his collection of Roman sculpture, Chinese ceramics, Renaissance-era tapestries, and Rococo furniture, all dispersed considerably as they had been at the time Deering wintered there. The art collection extends out to the gardens, where 1 can see endless sculptures of mythological gods and goddesses amidst the plants tremendous vases hundreds of years old, filled with stunning flowers and ferns ceramic urns of dazzling color lining walkways fountains and pools and tiny grottoes with frescoed ceilings or those with ceilings of embedded shells, the work of endless hours by talented craftsmen.
Vizcaya really defies description. It's a romantic spot, so a lot so that it has become a favorite location for engagements and wedding pictures. It's also a popular location for fashion photo shoots. Even with all this activity, wandering Vizcaya's massive garden region, it is achievable to feel like the only individual there, enjoying the rich bounty of Florida's lush landscape and the dream of 1 man who sought to generate a modest piece of Italy for himself stateside.
