Casa Camuzzi

When Hermann Hesse separated from his family and moved to Ticino, he rented four rooms in the Casa Camuzzi, a mansion built in 1853 by the architect Agostino Camuzzi in a Russian country-house style with an exotic terraced garden.
In this place Hermann Hesse deeply experienced the southern sensuality.

In 1920, in his short story Klingsor's last Sommer, he describes his beloved garden of Casa Camuzzi:
«Below him, dizzyingly precipitate, the old terrace gardens dropped away, a densely shadowed tangle of treetops, palms, cedars, chestnuts, judas trees, red beech, and eucalyptus, intertwined with climbing plants, lianas, wisterias. Above the blackness of the trees the large glossy leaves of the summer magnolias gleamed pallidly, the huge snow-white blossoms half-shut among them, large as human heads, pale as moon and ivory. From the massed leafage, penetrating and rousing, a tartly sweet smell of lemons drifted towards him.»

Aroused by this environment, Hermann Hesse took long walks which inspired him numerous watercolours.
Today the Museum is located in the Torre Camuzzi, which is part of the mansion of Casa Camuzzi. Nowadays both the mansion and the garden are private property and can only be admired from the outside.

Gallery