Casa Labia in Muizenberg is a sumptuous echo of 19th century Venice, with an elegant restaurant to match
Just beyond the surf shops and cafés of Muizenberg, on the coastal road to St James, is an astonishing piece of history. Flashback to 1926 Cape Town when Natale Labia, the first Italian ambassador to South Africa, had a yearning to build a house that reminded him of his childhood home, Palazzo Labia on Venice’s Grand Canal. He commissioned South African architect Frederick McIntosh Glennie, a contemporary of renowned English architect Sir Herbert Baker, to build an ocean-view residence combining Baker arches, gable-shaped doors and fanlights with Italianate arches, pillars and a cherubic ceiling fresco. Pipes laid under the road filled a salt-water swimming pool, and interior items were shipped out from Italy: chandeliers, gold-leaf ceiling panels, mirrors, silk wallpaper.
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