Matteo Rocca and Ronan Dunphy peered into the gloom on the second floor of the 12th-century palazzo in Genoa, Italy.
This had once been the grandest part of the seven-story palace, with the highest ceiling, the tallest windows and the most elaborate painted decoration. It was here, on the “piano nobile,” or noble floor, that the aristocratic family who had once occupied the building would have entertained guests.
But by the time the couple saw the former showplace in 2019, it was a ruin. Holes pocked floors and walls. Wind blew in through leaky wooden windows with dingy, rattly glass. The piano nobile lacked basic electricity, never mind heat and running water.
In the 1800s, the palace had been divided into apartments. Then the rear of the building was damaged in a bombing during World War II. The second floor had become a tailor’s shop and residence before the tailor and his family moved out, leaving the space empty for nearly six decades. Even with a cafe and restaurant occupying the ground floor and tenants filling the floors above, the second floor remained dormant, except for a jumble of old furniture and dusty books.
As Mr. Rocca and Mr. Dunphy roved around, it was impossible to discern how the rooms had originally been laid out. They shone flashlights up at the vaulted ceiling of the main room, where a fresco was covered with soot.
“I was afraid to touch the walls, afraid plaster would come off and crumble to the ground,” said Mr. Dunphy, 37.
The man selling the place had acquired it decades earlier with the intention of fixing it up for himself, but had never managed the daunting task. The second floor wasn’t just uninhabitable, it was no longer even classified as a residence (officially, it was storage space, and a buyer would have to petition local authorities to convert it back to residential use). And the palace stood on a historic piazza that is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, meaning any structural changes were strictly regulated.
But the couple were architects who knew their way around building codes and bureaucratic red tape, and Mr. Rocca is an expert in historic structures. Both were tired of renting, and they felt the pull of the decrepit place.
“There was a story there, a story that needed to be brought back to life,” said Mr. Dunphy, who works at the Genoa-based architecture firm Renzo Piano Building Workshop.
So they paid 250,000 euros (about $260,000) for the wreck and embarked on a renovation that took two years and cost another 350,000 euros (about $364,000), but ultimately yielded a glorious, if quirky, one-bedroom apartment of about 1,000 square feet that Mr. Dunphy and Mr. Rocca now share with their rescue dog, Milo.
Completing the project may have involved as much subtraction as addition.
They proceeded carefully with the renovation, continuing to live in their rental while waiting for approvals. When work finally got underway, they did some of it themselves.
“It was like an archaeological site,” said Mr. Rocca, 34, a partner at the architecture firm Dodi Moss, based in Genoa.
One discovery was a surviving part of the building’s staircase from the 16th century, which had been concealed by a wall after the palace was partitioned into apartments, eliminating the need for such a majestic connection between the floors. An arched window was one clue to the existence of the hidden fragment; it had original panes of glass held in place with the kind of lead framing used in the 1500s. A series of staggered groin vaults, also typical of a 16th-century staircase, was another clue.
As their contractor cautiously removed the wall’s plaster and brick bit by bit, a Carrara marble column and balustrade appeared, prompting the architects to rethink their floor plan and apply for permission for a revised scheme that would allow them to keep their discovery revealed. Today, the staircase to nowhere is their mini library, lined with bookshelves.
The adjacent space still bore traces of blue and orange vertical stripes — a kind of faux wallpaper that had been added during the 19th century. After a plasterer filled in holes in the walls, the couple painstakingly completed the stripes themselves, applying watercolor paint with small brushstrokes. “It is important for those who come after us to be able to distinguish between what is original and what is restoration,” Mr. Rocca said.
An expert conservator had to be hired, though, for the ceiling fresco in the main space. She spent eight months up on a platform in the 18-foot-tall room, using surgical scalpels, brushes and sponges to gently remove centuries of grime and an ill-conceived retouching. As she worked, the dark sky of the fresco brightened to its original blue and the carriage bearing the angels of justice and charity turned golden again.
If this room was originally mostly for show, it’s now the hardworking center of the home, a combination living room, dining room and kitchen.
For the latter, Mr. Dunphy, whose firm specializes in contemporary architecture, took charge. Rather than hark back to the traditional styles of the floor’s earlier décor — “We didn’t want to live in a museum,” he said — he went in the opposite direction, designing a minimalist kitchen island faced with warm-toned chestnut topped by white Carrara marble from a quarry not far from the one that had yielded the stone for the room’s terrazzo floor. Laminate panels affixed to a nearby wall conceal appliances and storage while disguising the fact that the ancient wall is not exactly vertical.
At the floor’s rebuilt rear, where the ceiling is lower, chestnut and white marble were deployed again in the bedroom and en suite bathroom — the former used for the bedroom’s built-ins, the latter for bathroom floors and counters.
Throughout the apartment, the furniture is decidedly modern. In the main room, lightweight injection-molded armchairs designed by Piero Lissoni face a sofa by Sergio Bicega. Tables are topped with glass, which practically disappears in the space.
“It is hard to compete with a fresco from the 1600s or a Renaissance marble column,” Mr. Ronan said. “It would not be correct to do so.”
When weather permits, the couple open the room’s 10-foot-tall casement windows, whose original glass was carefully removed from the old framing and reinstalled after a carpenter restored the wood and metal hinges. Between the windows, and also restored, is the family crest of Antonio Da Passano, the aristocrat who likely once occupied the house and who from 1675 to 1677 was the doge, or duke, of what was then the Republic of Genoa.
The ceiling fresco is visible from the street; tour guides sometimes stop in front of the building and point up at the newly glowing work of art.
Mr. Rocca, whose grandparents were from Genoa, said he and his partner take pride in knowing that they have not only created a home for themselves, but have salvaged a piece of the city’s history.
“For a brief moment,” he said, “we can share with the visitors to Genoa the rich heritage that we are custodians of today.”
