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Liguria

Compact Grandeur in Genoa

In the heart of Genoa, the corner apartment of an historic palazzo has been rescued from graceless subdivision and given back a measure of domestic dignity.

Once part of the great salon of a palace overlooking the Piazza San Giorgio, the space had suffered the usual indignities of time: partitions, mezzanines, false ceilings — all conspiring to diminish its height and its grace.

Architects Luca Scardulla and Federico Robbiano of llabb began by clearing away the clutter and restoring the luminous hall, whose three windows frame the churches of San Giorgio and San Torpete (where you can find St Thomas Becket in the altarpiece).

The owners — a couple whose work in communications and photography — asked for a space that could accommodate books, art, friends, and the occasional guest, and all within fifty-eight square metres.

The entrance hallway leads past a discreet utility room, bathroom, and bedroom before opening into a double-height living space that unites kitchen, dining, and sitting areas beneath the restored ceiling.

One wall is entirely given over to books: a towering library with a sliding aluminium ladder gliding along its rail. An open staircase turns upward to a mezzanine level with a desk for work and a bed-nook for guests. Beside the steps, a translucent glass screen allows daylight to reach the bedroom beyond.

“We like the apartment not to be completely revealed at one glance,” says Scardulla, “but to be discovered by moving through it”. The result is indeed a procession rather than a panorama — a space composed to unfold.

The architects allowed themselves a playful update: the missing corner of the ceiling’s stucco decoration was faithfully replicated, though the human figure of the other corners was replaced by a 3D-printed Lego man.

If I allow myself one quibble, it’s with the terrazzo flooring: Give me wood any day of the week, with a Persian carpet thrown atop when needed. That aside, this Genoese apartment stands as a model of intelligent adaptation: respectful of the past, confident in the present, and, like all good architecture, a pleasure to look at.

If the grand salons of Genoa were once the preserve of aristocratic families, here the scale is domestic but generous. Within its compact boundaries, this apartment restores the dignity of the palazzo to the measure of contemporary life — a little palace for two (and the occasional guest), quietly reborn among the twisting caruggi of this ancient noble port. (more…)

October 27, 2025 12:30 pm | Link | 3 Comments »

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