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Claire and Pierre-Marie's Franco-Italian duplex 70 m² Venice, Italy Contemporary classic Retro-contemporary Two-storey Pierre-Marie Boulic

This Home Tour is from Sloft Edition 03

Pierre-Marie discovered Venice 24 years ago. "I arrived one evening in December with my wife Claire in this incredible city. And then, it was a case of love at first sight." He later returned for many years, several times each year. For pleasure and for work. A Parisian working in the event industry, he often has the occasion to go to Venice for big events like The Venice International Film Festival, The Biennale, and various other meetings. A way to link the practical and the pleasurable.

Enchanted by Venice’s spell, the couple decided to buy an apartment there. "Some people buy in Deauville, we decided to buy in Venice! It’s three hours door to door from Paris and the city has many advantages: a couple minutes away from the sea, and the mountains are less than an hour away. The history is incredible, and the architecture is sublime." Their search criteria were fairly minimal: a penthouse and an access to the exterior. But the real estate market is complex in this lacustrine city. Claire is the one who found the property. "She has the gift to find things that are out of the ordinary" bragged her husband. The visit began with a sotoportego, literally "under the portico", the small passage with the look of a tunnel, going through different private buildings to connect the small squares and courtyards to the street. "One of the lowest in Venice. It’s unusual! You almost have the impression of being in Fort Bayard", jokes Pierre-Marie. Promising.

And then came the discovery of the terrace, the long-awaited access to the outside. "With a 190-degree view of the Canal San Pietro. We’re across from the basilica, we see the Laguna, the mountain range and then the Venetian rooftops, the campaniles..." Especially, since even in its raw state, the apartment had strong foundations. Renovations, however, were necessary, "there were differences in the floor level by almost twenty centimeters!", exclaimed Pierre-Marie. They had to pare everything down to the bare bones, to look for traces of the past buried here and there. "We found old bricks, wood beams..." The couple decided to keep these elements to recall the apartment’s roots in Italy and Venice and to add other contemporary French touches to create a palazzo that reflected their own identities. They enjoy coming here all year round for a Venetian retreat.