It is the meeting point of distant suggestions, the Roman house of Emilia Petruccelli. The gallery owner and founder of Edit Napoli, the editorial design fair that will open its doors for the third edition in October, has made her home in the Coppedè district of Rome the place where the best of the international design scene meets to define one author space. Here, in a building from the early twentieth century in the neighborhood where the architect Gino Coppedè modeled his eclectic visions by blending Art Nouveau and the Middle Ages, Baroque and Ancient Greece, Petruccelli brought his sensitivity as a gallery owner.

The house is a mix of bespoke design pieces created and assembled in collaboration with international creatives and moved by Emilia's passion for craftsmanship and research. From the entrance door, which opens onto the main living room, passing through the bespoke balustrade designed by Maarten Baas, to the downstairs with the dining room and the garden, the home wants to be and is “a warm, lived-in place with layering of things that I like and am passionate about, with iconic pieces and pieces of the heart”, says the owner.

It is easy to say that Petruccelli brought the logic of a gallery into his home. It is also correct, but on condition that Petruccelli is not considered a gallery owner in the strict sense: “Mia, my exhibition space in Rome, is not a real gallery: that definition derives from its architecture. Mia is actually a boutique with a careful selection of contemporary design pieces ranging from industrial to editorial, plus a few affordable Italian vintage pieces. Their refinement suggests limited editions, but this is not the case. Indeed, it is precisely from the need to find the pieces for Mia that Edit Napoli was born”. 

The scouting of the hostess finds an outlet in this space on two levels furnished and embellished with art works by Dirk Van Der Kooij, Reinaldo Sanguino, Andrea Anastasio and Coralla Maiuri. Here is the coffee table by Hagit Pincovici, the sculptural cube of light by Mieke Meijer, the chair by Ana Kraš and contemporary Italian works of art, including forays celebrating Naples, Petruccelli's hometown, and Neapolitanity, as a neon light dedicated to Maradona, birthday present for her husband.

Design, of course, but also tradition and memory, with the marble chips of the flooring that evoke the country houses of southern Italy with which the house shares the distribution on two levels with the kitchen downstairs to have direct access to the garden and the separate representation area, upstairs. The room where Petruccelli spends most of his time? “The dining room and the kitchen, where the children do their homework and I work. But my favorite place is the garden, where I can sit on my blue Butterfly and read a good book with my Libero dog at my feet”.