Playing with colour: inside a dramatic Sicilian apartment
Capo is one of four historic quarters in Palermo and it’s famous for its boisterous street market. “It’s wonderfully analogue,” says design dealer Olivia Brittberg, who lives here with her partner in life and work, En Dolci. “It’s how I imagine life in the 1960s might have felt – everyone is friendly and genuine. When I leave the house, I’m greeted with shouts of, ‘Ciao, principessa!’ It’s easy to feel very at home here.”
Olivia and En moved to this Sicilian city 10 years ago having met in Sweden while working for the fashion house Acne Studios. Olivia is Swedish as is En’s mother, but his father was born in Palermo. “My father passed away when I was 18, so I had this longing to see if it made any sense to live here,” En explains.
They moved to Palermo within a few months of becoming a couple. At the time, Olivia ran a vintage clothing business – a venture she began when she was just 17. “Music was a huge inspiration for me,” she says. “My dad had a large vinyl collection. When I was growing up, I found the graphics and the colours on each album cover so inspiring. I’ve loved everything about the 70s since then.”
Shortly after their move, their business, Palermo Atelier, expanded to include midcentury Italian design objects and furniture. “We found so many beautiful, underappreciated pieces here that it just evolved naturally,” says En. Nowadays, having partnered with the e-commerce platform, 1st Dibs, they sell their finds to interior designers across the world. “It’s always exciting to see our items featured in large projects,” says En, “but I’m especially happy when I find we’ve contributed a bit of Italian craziness to cool Scandinavian design.”
When they first arrived in the city, the couple rented a modern flat that was at odds with their aesthetic, but in December 2020, Olivia found this spacious apartment occupying the top two floors of an 18th-century building. “The flat was essentially an empty shell with no pre-existing kitchen or amenities, such as hot water,” En recalls. “But almost every room had high, vaulted ceilings and antique flooring – it was as though every corner of our home told a story of the centuries gone by.”
They later learned that there was a separate space in the building available to rent: a converted stable that could house their trove of Italian design objects. It was an opportunity not to be missed.
Once the structural repair work had taken place and a 1960s kitchen had been sourced and installed, the fun commenced. There were seven rooms for En and Olivia to gleefully reimagine. “Being avid lovers of beautiful things, the design and build process unfolded organically,” En explains. “Many decisions were spontaneous. Mostly, we were guided by the irresistible allure of the pieces we’ve discovered along the way.”
The couple often use their own home as a backdrop for photographing their design items, so they were keen to find interesting colours and surfaces to complement their unique finds. “We thought about designing our own wallpaper, but then we stumbled upon several stacks of sheet music at an antiques market. We thought, why not give it a try?” says Olivia. They papered their generous entrance room in sheet music up to the height of an imagined dado rail. The remaining wall space was painted light blue: “A choice inspired by the Sicilian sky,” Olivia explains. “It’s a strong colour, but it still works really well with other bold colours, such as the red Fritz Hansen chair.” A corner of curved Venini wall mirrors injects instant glamour into the space.
They have accumulated a surfeit of seating which has been arranged across three interconnected rooms that overlook the street below. The first is a formal living room with two lowslung Sciolari chandeliers, a battered red leather sofa and a painting of a prowling tiger. “That is our favourite treasure,” explains En. “It was handpainted by [the Spanish interior decorator] Jaime Parladé and was originally from one of Palermo’s most prominent families. Its watchful gaze is visible from nearly every room of our first floor, so it’s become the centrepiece of our home.”
The same room also houses their “safari cupboard” – a unique piece of cabinetry featuring hand-carved giraffes. “We unexpectedly found this at the Sunday market in Palermo,” En recalls. “It completely captured our hearts and we were able to buy it for a nominal price. The seller strapped it to his small tuktuk and we managed to get it home safely.”
The formal living room connects to their “movie room”, which features squidgy armchairs, more Venini lighting and a psychedelic Verner Panton rug spread over original terrazzo floor tiles. This room opens on to the dining room in which vintage sheet music has taken over all four walls and the ceiling. The sculpted steel dining table and chairs by Romeo Rega and Maison Jansen, respectively, add more glamour. On the mirrored console is a large Murano pink vase designed by Carlo Naso – another one-of-a-kind item that the couple fell for on a buying trip to Parma last year.
At the end of the corridor, a wrought-iron spiral staircase leads up to a reading room and the main bedroom, where the intricate blue and white floor tiles clash shamelessly with a psychedelic 70s bedspread. From the reading room, the couple are able to access “the true gem” of the apartment – an expansive roof terrace that faces inwards, overlooking a shared courtyard. “Its our private retreat,” says En. “A tranquil escape from the chaotic, vibrant energy of Palermo.”