“Doesn’t everybody want a room with a fresco?” exclaims George Gottl. The American design veteran, who has held top creative roles at Nike and masterminded boutiques for Sephora, is talking excitedly about his recent hunt for an Italian retreat.
It was the search terms “Fresco. Historic. For Sale. Go” that led him and his husband, Dutch filmmaker Anton van der Linden, to Lake Como and a palazzo apartment in the ancient Roman enclave of Laglio. But while the property was historic, dating back to the 14th century, it drew a blank on the fresco prerequisite.
The decorative motifs on the villa have been restored to the original design from the mid-1300s © Ramona Balaban
“It did have a beautiful umbrella vault ceiling, though, so I thought, ‘OK, we’ll fake the fresco,’” smiles Gottl, dressed in a linen blazer with a patterned silk cravat. “I had a whole plan to copy an amazing one in the palace owned by the Etro family in Puglia.” But when he hired Renova to take on the renovation, fresco specialist Patricia Gili made a happy discovery. “She scraped the ceiling with a teaspoon and sure enough, the colour popped out,” he says. “I mean, I practically had an orgasm.”
Gottl traces his hankering for historic details back to his upbringing in California, “where I think the oldest building was from 1972”, he laughs. He grew up in an identikit suburban tract home – “very Stepford” – in Orange County. His mother is Costa Rican with Italian heritage, “raised super-Catholic”; his father was German and fled from Munich to the US during the second world war. “I wanted to be an actor,” says Gottl of his childhood ambitions. “But my mom refused; she said it would make me gay… ha ha.”
