Villa Rosebery

Villa Rosebery is a villa in Naples, Italy, set in about 6.6 hectares of grounds, and is one of three official residences of the President of Italy alongside the Quirinal Palace in Rome and the estate at Castelporziano. It began as a cottage built in 1801 for an Austrian officer, Count Thurn, and was rebuilt in the mid nineteenth century by Don Agostino Serra Terranova as the Casino Gaudiosa, with the architects Stefano Gasse and Luigi Gasse giving it its present neoclassical form; the property later passed through several owners before the British statesman Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery, bought it in 1897 and gave it his name. Rosebery donated the villa to the British government in 1909, and the Italian state later acquired it, designating it an official presidential residence in 1957. It remains state property and continues to serve as a residence of the Italian head of state.