The Depperu mansion stands in the historic center of Luras, right in front of the 18th-century parish church of Our Lady of the Rosary. It is part of the set of fine buildings that characterize the town, the expression of a wealthy class consisting mainly of merchants and landowners. Built in 1908 at the behest of the Luresan brothers Giovanni and Giovanni Maria Depperu, the mansion-still nineteenth-century in its external features-amazes inside for the expressive richness of its decorations, which derives from a conscious adherence to the Art Nouveau language. The pictorial decoration of stately palaces is not limited only to the two main centers-Cagliari and Sassari-but is a phenomenon with a widespread diffusion throughout the Sardinian territory, affecting even the minor centers, in the presence of a middle-class type of patronage, particularly “attentive to cultural fashions.” In the second half of the nineteenth century, and in some cases until the first decade of the following century, the dominant style in architecture was the neo-Renaissance style, of which there are still conspicuous traces in all Italian regions today. The most widely used model is undoubtedly that of the 16th-century Roman palace, reason why Rome becomes the main center of development and diffusion of the style.
