Allegra Marchiorello doesn’t believe in ghosts, although you might bump into one at her family home, Ca’ Leoncino, a handsome villa in the small village of Castello di Godego in the Veneto region of northeastern Italy. It’s an area where rich Venetians traditionally had summer houses, which were often given as gifts or part-payments to noblemen for their services to the republic. The walls of Ca’ Leoncino date back to the early 16th century and are still partially covered in frescoes.
Marchiorello’s father moved into the villa in the Sixties, after his father gave it to him as a wedding present. The family lived here for many years until he and Marchiorello’s mother divorced. Then it languished, a little unloved, as a holiday house until Marchiorello and her brother, Tomasso, decided to breathe new life into their childhood home.
“I’ve always been close to my brother,and after we both had children we thought it would be lovely for them to enjoy the same upbringing we had,” she says.
Today the 2,500sq metre house has been divided in two. Marchiorello, the creative director of Once Milano, a lifestyle brand, lives in one part with her husband, Andrea Beghetto, who works in his family’s agriculture business, and their four young children; her brother and his family live in the other part.
Is privacy ever a problem? “We’ve always had separate entrances and my sister-in-law is very respectful of our space, so it has never been an issue,” she says. It has been trickier to impose physical boundaries on the children, but both couples agree this is not much of a sticking point. “Many people wonder how to entertain their kids at the weekend,” says Marchiorello, “but because we have this band of seven trooping around together, it’s like having a party all the time.”
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This summer, Marchiorello’s father moved back in. “There’s space for everyone,” she says. “My father travels a lot for his work, but it’s a great base for him and allows him to spend time with his family.”
When she took over the villa, Marchiorello wanted to update the interiors, which hadn’t been touched since the Seventies.
“My mother has exquisite taste,” she says. “She’s an important design figure here in the Veneto – she was a designer for Blumarine and Benetton – but she’s also known for doing up great houses with an exacting eye and unflinching way with colour. That said, the decor was dark and not my style at all. And times have changed. Many of the walls were covered in textiles that she’d picked up on her travels to India and China in the Seventies. I wanted something clean and neutral.”
Marchiorello set about creating an airy, uncluttered house, juxtaposing raw textures such as “hammered” stone with brass because she felt it would be easier to keep tidy with so many children running around. “Essentially, though, I like having only a few things. I like that sense of emptiness. It makes me feel calm and relaxes me.”
Her inspiration came from Dutch and Belgian designers, particularly Piet Boon, Wolterinck and Vincent Van Duysen. “I like to have a neutral base where you can add colour through the textiles and accessories,” she says. “In many ways, the clean lines of Van Duysen’s work and the way he uses light, space and material remind me of the great Venetian architect, Carlo Scarpa.”
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Increasingly, Marchiorello is influenced by Italian labels, such as Nilufar and Dimore Studio, a highlight of the recent Milan Furniture Fair. “Their use of colour is bold and fascinating,” she says. “They are very good at mixing old with new, colour with neutrals.”
Apart from the Fifties first-class train seats that adorn the hallway – relics from her grandfather’s train company – nearly all the furniture, such as the wooden kitchen table, was designed by Marchiorello and made to her specifications.
“The Veneto is full of artisans and is famous for its furniture, textiles and glassware. It’s very much the fashion here to have everything made by someone local. This part of Italy has the highest number of companies registered in the whole of Italy. Every little house has its own company in the backyard.”
It’s one of the reasons Marchiorello cofounded Once Milano, which sells handmade table and bed linen. “Italians like to have a certain standard in their everyday life, however humble they are,” she says. “They want to lay their breakfast out nicely, make sure everything looks just so. It sounds archaic, but there’s still a strong tradition when a woman gets married of bringing il corredo, her trousseau of beautiful linen that has been collected over the years and painstakingly embroidered. Linen is very much part of the Italian way of life.”