Old art, new home at Parkway Brewing Co. in Salem 

For decades, Italian restaurant Villa Sorrento on Patterson Avenue was a Roanoke landmark.

Anyone who dined there in the 1980s and ’90s remembers the murals evoking fanciful Mediterranean scenes — a young couple on a rocky cliff looking out on the ocean, a Venetian panorama with boats carrying passengers through canals dividing old world buildings.

Villa Sorrento may be long gone — the restaurant left the murals behind in 2000 and closed in 2004 — but the murals are on public display again, this time in Salem.

Walk into Parkway Brewing Co. at 739 Kesler Mill Road and you’ll see 12 10-foot-tall panels secured to the walls as you head to the bar, painted with vintage Italian scenes.

Not all of the brewery’s customers recognize the Villa Sorrento paintings, but “people that know it love it,” said Mike “Keno” Snyder, who co-owns the brewery with his wife, Lezlie.

The Snyders credit Bill Jones, a folk art collector who runs The Gallery across from Hollins University, and Dorsey Taylor, who with his wife Linda owns the LinDor Arts gallery in Roanoke, with saving the murals .

In 2000 the West End Center purchased the neighboring Villa Sorrento building for $180,000 and converted it into a space for youth programs. The restaurant owners had moved the 40-year-old business to Williamson Road, but their customer base didn’t follow them, and it closed for good in 2004. In January, the Patterson Avenue building was torn down to make way for a credit union branch.

When he learned of the demolition, Jones intervened to rescue the mural panels. They ended up stored in a warehouse owned by a friend. Jones teamed with Dorsey Taylor to find a new home for the panels, but they haven’t found a buyer yet.

“The panels are just so big,” Taylor said. “No restaurant ever stepped up to the plate.”

Jones and Taylor have discussed selling them to benefit the West End Center, but the idea eventually went on the back burner .

Then in August, the panels had to be moved quickly so the warehouse owner could repaint in anticipation of renting the space. Lezlie Snyder, a longtime friend of Taylor’s, offered to house the murals, and luckily a friend of Keno’s visiting that afternoon had a truck large enough to transport them.

“Things at our brewery seem to just happen serendipitously,” she said.

It took hours to transport the panels, which Keno Snyder estimated as weighing about 200 pounds a piece.

It’s still unclear what will ultimately happen to the murals — the West End Center fundraiser remains a possibility — but for the moment they’re going to stay put.

“They really are pretty amazing,” Lezlie Snyder said.

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