Lunch in the garden with Grazia Gazzoni Frascara is curiously otherworldly. On a table covered with starched linen and set with antique glass and porcelain stand elegant silver bowls of freshly cut ‘New Dawn’, ‘Gertrude Jekyll’, ‘Pierre de Ronsard’ and ‘Albéric Barbier’ roses. ‘My garden is a wonderful friend every day,’ says my host. Within high walls, fountains, bay topiaries and hedge-formed ‘rooms’, Grazia designed a giardino all’Italiana in the classical style she absorbed in Florence. ‘There were already two horse chestnuts; I planted three more.’ Antique statues are interspersed with pots of white flowering Camellia japonica ‘Hagoromo’ and rose beds. ‘My friend Teddy Millington-Drake,’ to whom she often refers, ‘told me to plant white flowers, as guests can better see them in the evenings,’ says Grazia. She has lived here in Bologna for 60 years.
A scion of the Marchi dynasty, industrialists, art collectors and makers of fine Tuscan wine, Grazia came to this city from Florence on her marriage to Giuseppe Gazzoni Frascara. In the 1900s his great-uncle Arturo had invented Idrolitina, a powder that could turn still water into sparkling. Grazia’s husband went on to expand the company and for a time owned Bologna football club, being honorary president until his death in 2020.
Aside from its acclaimed trattorias and rossa buildings, the Red City is famed for its arcades. Along the portico of Via Santo Stefano lies the Palazzo Agucchi. Grazia’s in-laws lived in an opulent apartment on the ground floor, and initially the newlyweds moved into the first floor in 1963. Later, now living more independently from Giuseppe, Grazia moved in 2005 to this ground-floor apartment, made from four opulent reception rooms by a garden.
‘I suppose the palazzo is sort of 18th century,’ she says. The Agocchia family rebuilt it in the 1740s with a portico of nine arches. The architect responsible for the façade was Carlo Francesco Dotti, but the rear wasn’t finished for another 50 years by Angelo Venturoli. Gesturing airily upwards, she adds: ‘These palazzos are all the same: the top floors were for the servants and then the first floor is where the family live – but then they would use the ground floor for receptions, or in the summer, because it’s cooler.’
Paolo Pejrone, the famed gardener (WoI Sept 2022), designed the iron pergola by the house, over which grows a riot of star jasmine in pots. I am amazed at their size, and Grazia explains that the bottoms of the pots were removed, so that the roots could push down and thrive in the soil beneath. Over salad, we bounce naturally to the topic of holes in her drawing-room ceiling. ‘They are very Baroque. It’s a very amusing idea that you have oval holes in the ceiling and through them you see another ceiling.’ She is referring to her quadratura frescos, in which trompe-l’oeil painting creates architectural illusions. ‘There are real holes in the volta traforata [perforated vault] ceiling of a palazzo in Palermo, the Valguarnera-Gangi, designed by Andrea Gigante.
‘Palermo in the 13th century was like New York – intellectual and cosmopolitan.’ Conversation covers many topics, including her travels to Chatsworth and Petworth House, to Patmos, Russia, Syria, Turkey and India. Grazia also talks eloquently about the effect the discovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum had on design, especially Napoleon’s Neoclassicism; back to the 13th-century Frederick II of Sicily of the Holy Roman Empire and his red porphyry sarcophagus; and the period from 902, when Muslims controlled Sicily.
Grazia speaks of her admiration for the Arab engineers of ancient civilisations and of Mesopotamia. ‘Mesos means middle – potamia means rivers; and the canals designed off the Tigris and the Euphrates were fantastic. They became the owners of everything; they occupied Iran and then Palestine, Syria, north Africa and they arrived in Spain too – so they were incredible people. Damascus was the wealthiest place in the world. In any case, why am I telling you this, because that has nothing to do with this palazzo.’
Back inside, off the hall, you enter the apartment directly into an impressive reception room. Grazia explains: ‘I installed a screen and console table, so that the room is both an entrance and a dining room. It is very strange, because you know, Italians like everything properly organised, but I thought, Why should I have such a big entrance – what for? I wanted to have a dining room.’
To the left of the front door is a watercolour of Petworth House by Teddy Millington-Drake. (Having stayed there, Grazia speaks highly of her hosts, Max and Caroline Egremont, in particular the two hot-water bottles they provided.) Hung in the guest bedroom are more of his watercolours, but they show Greek scenes. ‘Teddy was simpatico, a special person, a great artist, painter and poet; an interior decorator, and he did gardens. He was a personality, and he had a divine house in Patmos, where I met him in the early 70s, and a house near Siena, also very pretty. That generation had incredible taste.’ The dining-room area has a console table covered in an Indian sari, on which sit a pair of early 19th-century Russian crystal-and-ruby candelabra bought in Florence from Russian aristocrats, the Demidovs.
In the drawing room, Grazia explains that in the 18th century colours tended towards green and pink, whereas in the 19th century painted walls became much darker. ‘So I made the walls yellow. Yes, it is not very original, but then, you know, I liked it because it gives light.’ In the sitting room is a large antique model of the Taj Mahal. In 2009 Grazia’s daughter, Idarica Gazzoni Frascara (WoI Sept 2021), founded Arjumand’s World, a Milan-based fine fabric and wallpaper house, named after the Mughal princess for whom that mausoleum in Agra was built.
The ruffled-edge curtain fabric is from Antico Setificio Fiorentino, the silk maker. ‘I saw these curtains at the Palazzo Tozzoni in Imola, just outside Bologna, and I was struck by how pretty they were, like a dress. Their draper made me two, and my dressmaker made the rest.’ Between the windows sits a Louis XV marquetry-and-ormolu secrétaire that came from Grazia’s mother-in-law, Countess Idarica Frascara. ‘She was a strong character, as am I, very elegant, and friends with the likes of Mona von Bismarck and Elsa Schiaparelli. I admired her enormously. This piece was expensive, but in a way it is cold. In taste, I prefer the Near East.’
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The last course is a divine chocolate gelato from the Cremeria Santo Stefano next door, served in a ring thanks to a savarin mould. To me, Grazia exemplifies aesthetic curiosity, self-possession and moral elegance; the philosophical and the practical. And I understand her even better when Idarica says of her mother: ‘I am her arm. But she is my mentor.’
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