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The Black Room, whose name was given by the furniture and the tapestry placed here at the end of the nineteenth century, is one of the two entertainment staterooms of the villa, placed on the ground floor symmetrically at left and right side of the entrance hall.
In the nineteenth century, when the family of the German Walter Erich Jacob Kees lived in the Villa, the room was used as a dining room. The greatest part of the room (and of the Villa) is furnished as it was when Kees lived here.
The tapestry is a nineteenth century wall-paper made through cold roller printing. It shows winged putti among foliaceous garlands and floral decorations on a dark ground. The same patterns taken from the late sixteenth century ornamentations, are represented also in the furniture decorations.
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In the middle of the wall facing the windows there is an important fireplace made in black Varenna marble and in baroque style. It could date back to the period in which the house belonged to Mornico Family.
A precious Flemish arras dated seventeenth century hangs above the fireplace. According to the tradition, the arras shows the meeting between Antony and Cleopatra with a view of the port.
Pieces made up in darkened, sculptured and carved walnut are the furniture of this room; they are placed along and at the middle of the walls and belonged to Mr. Kees. With their rich and exuberant decorations, they show an evident nordic influence, but they come from the work of skilled italian workers and reintroduce tose manneristic patterns of late Renaissance, wich were considered the most suitable for dinig rooms. As showed in a ticket found in the bottom of a drawer, this room furniture was made in the famous specialized workshops of Michelangelo Guggenheim on the Canal Grande in Venice.
Between the two windows hangs an important oval looking-glass with a carved frame having angels among foliage. The three lights screen made in leather and golden carved wood dates second half of XIX century. It is placed in front of the imposing cast iron radiator making part of the central heating plant ordered in Germany by Mr. Kees.
From the ceiling decored with grisaille patterns according to the taste of century end, hangs the impressive wrought iron electric light chandelier. It is equipped with 16 lights decored with acanthus leaves and flowery shoots. It was realized according to the important technological innovations of the second half of the nineteenth century.
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