Via Lelia

Via Lelia was once lined with trees and considered the authentic elegant “living room” of Recoaro during the belle époque. It owes its name to Lelio Piovene, who in 1689 discovered the mineral water that led to Recoaro’s fame as an important health spa town.
Proceeding in the direction of the health spa centre, on the left you can see the Ligure Hotel (from the second half of the nineteenth century), which has balconies with iron railings on the first floor and simple wooden balustrades on the upper floors. The exterior wall is ochre, with light coloured squares and painted medallions that mimic the three-dimensional stucco effect.

The walls of the buildings were painted with a chalk painting technique which involves gradually spreading a layer of fine mortar from top to bottom and then arranging coal on a layer of dust for the outline of the drawing. The mortars are marked, in part, with iron to make the background stand out and to avoid colour smears.
Adjacent to the Ligure hotel is the Spanish Hotel where the facade was once entirely covered with frescoes of rich squares, French doors and balconies with iron balustrades. Some of these frescoes are still visible. The larch entrance door features frosted glass inserts with an ornamental pattern on the border. In the entrance there is an original ceiling light with an iron leaf decoration and three glass bell towers. The stone staircase has an iron railing with a stylized balustrade motif corresponding to each of the steps. The ceiling of each staircase is decorated with a green sage square that shows an elegant ornamentation with snowbells and leaves.

On the opposite side of the street, the Casa Cornale displays a two-storey façade with two rows of five balconies with white ornamental motifs at intervals on an ochre background. Returning to the left side, towards the end of the street, the Casa Nicolato, which dates back to the first post-war period, has a single coloured facade, as well as balconies with balustrades, while the original decoration had window frames with curved shapes at intervals; giving a result underlined by the iron balconies and railings themselves with elements of a contrasting chiaroscuro effect. The cornice, supported by two shelves, is decorated with rosettes. It is interesting to note how the importance of ornamentation is reduced from floor to floor from the bottom.
At the end of the street, keeping on the left, the Casa Munari gives us a beautiful example of the late art nouveau taste that had been spreading in popularity since the end of the First World War. The facade is characterized by the brightly coloured red and yellow woven carpet, illustrated on the lower part with spades and the upper part with fans. The insignia is painted with Art Nouveau characters, while the windows have jutting cymas and balconies with concrete columns.

Caffè Al Fiume