Desig House: Incredible Italian Homes

In the recently published book 'Domus: A Journey Into Italy's Most Creative Interiors' Italian photographer Oberto Gili and writer Marella Caracciolo Chia reveal the interiors of artists, aristocrats, designers, craftspeople and collectors from Tuscany to Turin. Here, Marella Caracciolo Chia talks us through the allure of Italian interiors...

Some rooms - like the pages of a personal diary or scrapbook, or the stage sets of a play - are spaces in constant flux, permeated by the aspirations, the talents, and sometimes even the failures of the individuals who inhabit them. In the course of nearly thirty years discovering and writing about Italian interiors, a good portion of which were photographed by Oberto Gili, I have seen thousands of rooms all over the country. Many of them were exercises in theatrical opulence, others were oases of comfort and domestic pleasures. Room after room, I kept trying to pin down what it was that made some of these spaces, compared to others, so absolutely and irresistibly alive. Was it the eclectic mix of objects? Eclecticism, of course, implies choice and knowledge, but that alone was not it. Was it the classic harmony one associates with great Italian interiors? Or the ever-present sense of history resonating in every nook and cranny? These are important elements, for sure, but alone they did not explain that mysterious alchemy that made some rooms conquer such a special place in my memories. One fundamental thing these particular rooms had in common, I eventually realized, was that they were all absolutely necessary and vital to the life, talent, and, sometimes, obsessions of those who made them. In other words, these interiors told a story.

The concept of rooms that reveal a good story is what this book is essentially about. Oberto Gili and I started talking about recording our "journey" through these "narrative interiors" ever since we met in 1993 during a shoot in Montalcino, Tuscany. In the course of the following two decades, sometimes working side by side for magazine features or on book projects, we travelled all over the country, visiting gardens, villas, castles, city homes, and rural estates. We discovered many beautiful interiors but what stayed with us were the ones belonging to highly creative individuals. Domus pays tribute to Italy's centuries-old tradition of using arts and crafts to create masterful interiors. It is the recording of our excursions into the private worlds of a number of artists, craftspeople, gardeners, and connoisseurs living in Italy today.

Introduction from Domus: A Journey Into Italy's Most Creative Interiors, photographed by Oberto Gili, with text by Marella Caracciolo Chia (Rizzoli, £45).