The Hemingway Museum

Villa Ca' Erizzo Luca

Bassano del Grappa, at the mouth of the Brenta River from the mountains, was in 1917-1918 a point of maximum resistance against repeated Austro-Hungarian attempts to break into the Venetian Plain and overwhelm the Italian line-up.

Just north of Palladio's famous wooden bridge, on the east bank of the river, stands Ca' Erizzo, an elegant 15th-century structure with later renovations and embellishments.

In 1918 the villa was the residence of Section One of the American Red Cross ambulances.

Among the volunteer drivers was Ernest Hemingway, whose 1919 short story MS 843 titled “The Woppian Way” or “The Passing of Pickles McCarty” takes its cue from Ca' Erizzo and the Arditi who were also stationed there.

Part of the complex, intelligently restored by current owner Dr. Renato Luca, houses the Hemingway Museum.

The museum

The only museum in Europe dedicated to Ernest Hemingway, this space occupies five large rooms in Villa Ca' Erizzo Luca. During the Great War, the Villa housed Section 1 of the American Red Cross ambulances, and it was here that Hemingway himself, a volunteer driver, lived for some time in the fall of 1918.

The Hemingway Museum houses a collection of materials and documentation on the well-known American writer, along with numerous panels, full of historical explanations, photographs and documentation not found in similar museums, that provide unprecedented insight into U.S. participation in World War I.

Ernest Hemingway's experiences during his volunteer service for the American Red Cross in the Veneto region will form the outline around which the narrative of “A Farewell to Arms,” one of his best-known publications, develops. Right from the novel's incipit, the Bassano landscape, the same one that surrounds Villa Ca' Erizzo, is clearly recognizable. Moreover, the 1919 short story titled “The Passing of Pickles McCarthy,” one of the young Hemingway's earliest writing efforts, takes its starting point precisely from Ca' Erizzo.

The Nobel Prize for Literature

Through years of patient research, a vast archival-photographic documentation, numerous editorial works of Ernest Hemingway in different editions in Italian and foreign languages, and rare and original journals, dealing extensively with his life and activities, have been collected in the Museum. The Hemingway Museum offers itself as a structure and foundation that over time will go on to study and develop everything unpublished and original it holds, enhancing the prestigious presence that the American writer wished to reserve for Italy and the Veneto region during his frequent stays.

Hemingway and the Veneto region

“I am an old Veneto fanatic,” Hemingway wrote to a friend in 1948. And to the Veneto, in fact, the American writer would return often throughout his life.

In the 1950s Ernest was in Venice, a guest of his friend Giuseppe Cipriani. Here the meeting with the young Adriana Ivancic revives in him the inspiration that will lead him to write a new novel, after years of silence: “Across the River and Into the Trees” is a passionate homage to the Venetian landscape, indelibly imprinted in Hemingway's memories.

Museum of Hemingway and of the Great War