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How Bulgari’s creative director turned a rundown drystone house in Puglia into her sanctuary
To say Lucia Silvestri is a busy woman would be an understatement. As the creative director of Italian jewellery house Bulgari, she is what Italians call ‘pendolare dei cieli’ – a commuter of the skies.
Her Instagram feed is testament to her dizzying schedule: New York, LA, Dubai, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Jaipur, Switzerland… sourcing gemstones, attending trade shows, hosting glamorous events. Based in Rome, where she designs all of Bulgari’s jewellery collections, she spends her precious downtime 310 miles further south, in a renovated trullo (a rural drystone house) in Puglia, the heel of Italy’s boot.
Puglia has been touted as the new Tuscany for almost two decades, but remains lackadaisical about achieving any such polish. Its charm lies in its rugged simplicity. On her first visit in 2014, Silvestri was hooked.
"I was visiting my friend who had bought a trullo here, and I fell in love at first sight," she says. Her friend owns the conical-roofed building a stone’s throw from Silvestri’s: she convinced Silvestri to buy the crumbling wreck that shared her pastoral plot. Having surveyed the wild landscape, dotted with ancient olive trees and bathed in a ‘magical’ light, it took a split second for Silvestri to agree. It would be a further four years before her own hideaway was complete.
With their distinctive cone-shaped roofs, trulli are a defining feature of Puglia’s Valle d’Itria. Built by farming families as far back as the 16th century, the story goes that they were designed to be quickly disassembled when tax collectors arrived seeking money from those with a roof over their heads.
Now Unesco-protected, many of these tiny, dilapidated structures have been converted into boutique hotels or holiday homes; a process fraught with bureaucracy. Silvestri enlisted local interior designer Bepi Povia, who specialises in renovating trulli, to oversee the project, and the pair struck up a firm friendship.
"During the restoration I visited about once a month, and Bepi took me to local markets, antique shops and suppliers. I knew nothing about Puglia so I wanted to discover everything," Silvestri says. As well as restoring the original 17th-century trullo, now the living space, and the adjoining 19th-century lamia (barn), which houses the kitchen and dining area, Povia created an extension for two en-suite bedrooms.
While the major building work was taking place, Silvestri stayed in local masserie, farmhouse hotels, to get a sense of Pugliese style. She describes the final result, with its bare, centuries-old stone and whitewashed limestone walls, as a ‘palate cleanser’.
While her apartment in Rome is furnished with pops of fuchsia, pink and green, here the colour palette comprises earthy neutrals: white, grey, beige and sage green, echoing the landscape outside every window. The only jolt of colour is in the master bedroom’s en-suite bathroom, which is finished in bold pinkish-coral – not a million miles from the colour of the walls of the Bulgari flagship store in Rome.
"In my work I am always trying to achieve harmony with shapes and colours, and here there is harmony between the stone, the interiors and the nature around us," Silvestri says. "The colours and the atmosphere are so calming. It’s quiet and peaceful – completely different to the rest of my life. I’ll spend two or three days here to refresh, then I can go back to running around."
Sometimes she’ll visit alone, but often she brings friends or family, enjoying an aperitivo on the trullo’s roof at sunset before sitting down for dinner at the table in the courtyard made from reclaimed timber and surrounded by basil, mint and rosemary. Inside is an almost invisible kitchen: Silvestri is not much of a chef, so there’s just a two-ring induction hob, a fridge/freezer built into the bleached-wood cabinetry, and a Nespresso machine. Instead, she’ll stock up on food and wine from local markets to serve. "I came here for a week last summer with two girlfriends, and we spent every evening here – we didn’t go out once. It was perfect."
In front is a courtyard paved with reclaimed Pugliese chianca stones, furnished with a daybed Povia sourced from Bali – one of the few pieces of furniture that isn’t local. A little further up the hillside, hidden behind cleverly planted, seemingly wild foliage, is a swimming pool in a very specific shade of grey-blue. "I didn’t want the classical, bright blue colour – I had in mind a softer shade, like a particular tanzanite or sapphire."
Silvestri sees gems everywhere. The poppies outside her bedroom window could be coral, the flowers that creep across drystone walls call to mind pink sapphires and amethysts. She shows me her earrings, which bear an uncanny resemblance to these blooms.
Silvestri is inspired by Puglia, she tells me – from the architecture of the Basilica di San Martino in nearby Martina Franca, to decorative details of the vintage ceramics she collects, made in Grottaglie. If she is inspired to work in the trullo, a vintage writing desk looks out over the courtyard to the fields beyond. Above her is a porthole-like skylight. "I love the fact that I can see the stars," she says. "Sometimes I sit here and just meditate. It’s so quiet, but at the same time I feel a good energy, a positive energy."
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