Robert Trewhella

Robert Trewhella (1830–?) was a Cornish engineer.

Trewhella was born in the Cornish village of Ludgvan, son of one of the most influential families of the county. He studied civil engineering and worked with Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the most famous British engineer of the 19th century.

Between 1850 and 1860, Trewhella was invited by the Italian government to participate in the construction of the infrastructure of the country. He moved to Italy, designing and building railways, roads and bridges, including the seventy-mile line between Florence and Bologna through the rugged Apennine Mountains. He built various railways in Sicily, including the Circumetnea line around Mount Etna, and the Palermo–Corleone line. He acquired land and sulphur mines, and built the first great hotel in Palermo, the Excelsior, where, in 1903 he received King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra as his guests.

Trewhella married an Englishwoman whom he had met in Sicily. He built the beach front Villa Sant’Andrea in Taormina Mare as his summer house. In the 1950s his son, Alfred Percy Trewhella, transformed the Villa Sant’ Andrea into a hotel.