Villa della Pergola
History
The history of the Villa is strictly related to those English who first came to Alassio on their winter holidays. In 1875 two Scottish gentlemen, George Henderson Gibb and General William Montagu Scott McMurdo were the first British who spent a whole year in Alassio together with their families. The next year they decided to buy two huge pieces of land on the hill above Alassio: the parks "Fuor del Vento" and "Molino di Sopra". General McMurdo was a veteran of the British Army who had shown his courage during the war of Crimea and numerous military campaigns in Pakistan and Afghanistan. They both could be defined "Eminent Victorians", quoting the title of a famous Lytton Strachey's novel.
The first building to be built by General McMurdo on his property was the "Villino della Pergola", which was called "Casa Napier" at that time. It reflected, better than the Villa itself, the taste of its creator; it was, in fact, designed according to Anglo-Indian architectural style of the English who had lived most of their lives in India, serving as officers, government officials or businessmen. It was built on three floors and was enriched by huge verandahs and pergolas which recalled those English houses built in the same years, in India and Malaysia, for the officials of the British Empire.
A few years later the McMurdo family commissioned the building of the "Villa della Pergola". This building was larger than the Villino but it rose on a slightly lower level. It was designed according to an eclectic taste and displays large balconies and verandahs with more luxurious elements, such as the dome , which recalls an orthodox Russian dome, splendid marble floorings and even a fountain near the central staircase.
As for the park, the McMurdo family's intention was to make it as a sort of environmental continuum of the inner rooms towards the sun and the Mediterranean flora. The garden was designed on a terraced level, following the natural sloping of the hill. The olive and orange trees were replaced with palm trees, Washingtonians, Dactiliferes and the beloved cypresses, which the English planted in their gardens as a reminder of the Tuscany landscape.
General McMurdo died in Nice in 1895. Before her death, in 1912, Lady McMurdo made over the property to Sir Walter Hamilton-Dalrymple, a Scottish baron, descendant of a noble loyalist family of the North Berwick. The Hamilton-Dalrymple family were landowners and political exponents; several members of the family were elected to the House of Commons.
In 1908, William Scott, in his historic guidebook "The Riviera", described the Villa as a worthy rival to the "Giardini della Mortola", owned by Thomas Hanbury, thanks to Sir Walter Hamilton-Dalrymple's genuine love for nature and intimate knowledge of art and landscaping.
