Before & After: Here’s What It Took to Give a Historic Palazzo a Royal Revamp
Living in an Italian villa might sound like a dream—but restoring this property involved rebuilding the structure, updating the utilities, and scraping decades of paint from the soaring, star vault ceilings.
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When Manuel Strebinger first saw this historic palazzo in the car-free center of Nardò, Italy, he thought: "It’s too big." It wasn’t just the 3,229-square-foot layout that was grand, but the interior proportions as well, as many of the rooms have 21-foot-tall star-vaulted ceilings. The estate had sat vacant for decades, it was missing doors and window glass, and it was home to a flock of pigeons. So Manuel, and his then-partner, and now co-owner Stefan Davids, kept up their search.
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Melissa Dalton
Dwell Contributor
Melissa Dalton is a freelance writer in Portland, Oregon, who has been writing for Dwell since 2017. Read more of her work about design and architecture at melissadalton.net.
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