How Studio Peregalli Updated A Classic Milan Townhouse

The townhouse in Milan’s historic center seems to have evolved effortlessly as if every stone, vault, and fenestration were dictated from deep in its bones. Don’t be fooled: the building’s old-world grandeur was summoned from thin air by Roberto Peregalli and Laura Sartori Rimini of Studio Peregalli.

The 19th-century table is Italian, the settees are custom, and the antique gilt-bronze chandelier is French. The tapestry consists of a 19th-century English canvas panel in the center with new panels painted by decorative artists on both sides to match.

The five-story building was radically transformed not once, but twice. Built in 1908 in the Rococo style, it had been stripped of all detail in the 1970s as part of a Brutalist makeover. The current owners, a family with three children, moved from London with an eye to buying a townhouse, especially one with a garden. But such properties are rare in the heart of Milan, where the preference is for larger apartment buildings with units on a single level.

The 19th-century armchair (left) is English, the console is Napoleon III, and the antique round table and mirror are Italian. The marble mantel is antique, and the walls are sheathed in reclaimed French boiserie.

Studio Peregalli reinvented the house again. They chose not to return to the early 20th century and copy the original building’s rehash of an 18th-century style, but to impose an internally consistent structural and decorative logic that didn’t reflect any particular era.

Studio Peregalli designed the bookshelves and wall paneling with rounded corners and trompe l’oeil grisaille golden friezes. The antique Isfahan rug is Persian, and the artwork is an 18th-century engraving of Rome.

“Our style is to reinvent the past in a way that is a sort of dream, invention, and memory all mixed together.” – Roberto Peregalli

He and Sartori Rimini compare their method to cooking, a balance of rigor and innovation that depends on carefully selected ingredients and extreme technical competence. There is no recipe. “Every room is a new invention,” she says.