Villa Gustavo

At the border between the towns of Meran and Algund in the South Tirol, there is a house located at 66 Via Goethe Strasse. It was built between 1860 and 1880. It stands adjacent to an AGIP gas station and in front of the Tappeiner Hospital of Meran. It looks like many of the old period houses which occupy Meran and suggests better times. Indeed, years ago, those better times surrounded our family there in that house, the Villa Gustavo.

The property was once a well to do villa on the then outskirts of Meran. The many acres that now occupy the hospital were in fact a large vineyard in the years preceding World War I. My grandmother Anna Rizzi lived there for some years after the death of her husband in 1913. The house, or villa, was the property of Anna Rizzi (Flor) and her brother Valentino Flor between…