“You had to use your imagination,” says Venturini.Īfter cutting through a tiny section of wallboard and carpet to see what was hidden underneath, they discovered that the drab office was merely a facade obscuring what had once been the 3,200-square-foot parlor floor of a majestic single-family dwelling. Indeed, the space, complete with dropped ceilings, a maze of drywall and a murky sea of wall-to-wall industrial carpeting, was being used as a sales office, occupied by a dozen people beavering away at their desks. While the structure had good bones - Italian Belle Époque architecture, with a central curved staircase featuring original polished gray plaster walls and a handsome wrought-iron balustrade - the apartment’s interior represented all the worst aspects of Milanese modernity. Their search wasn’t easy in a city heavily damaged by Allied bombs during World War II, then rebuilt and renovated, not always thoughtfully, in the decades afterward.Īt first, the flat in a four-story 1920 building near the Arco della Pace hardly seemed to be what Beretta, the general manager of Tod’s, and Venturini, the C.E.O. When Carlo Alberto Beretta and Jacopo Venturini, veteran fashion executives who have been romantic partners for over 20 years, went looking for a new Milan apartment six years ago, they were seeking some history and a bit of charm.

Mosaic vase