A place of contrasts

Over the fireplace sits a collection of coloured glass by Impero, Venini and others, alongside ceramics by Bottega Gatti, Fornasetti and Antonia Campi. The small table topped with pink Trani marble is from the Fassi Café in Rome. On top is a bronze bust of Giuseppe Verdi. Behind the bergère armchair is a large ceramic work by Giacinto Cerone.

Marco Arosio is a collector and connoisseur, who has dedicated his life to the search for antiques that will make one’s heart skip a beat. And Villa Singer, his home in Gorla, Milan, is filled with evidence of his years in the business. Built in the early 1900s by an Austrian nobleman, after whom the villa is named, the property was used as both a residence and a laboratory for creating perfumes.

Overlooking the banks of the Martesana Canal, there are locals who still remember the barges that docked to unload crates of dried roots, ready to be processed for the production of fragrances. In the early 1900s, the area was a charming village-like suburb full of Liberty-style buildings such as Villa Singer, with lots of greenery and lovely views, and known as Little Paris.

Marco’s great-grandfather fell in love with the area and bought Villa Singer in 1934. Here, his grandmother painted en plein air, and the house became a gathering place for fellow artists who came to paint and discuss art. This idyll ended abruptly with the Second World War, and in 1944 an American bombing raid devastated the district. Gorla never quite recovered its bucolic charm and is now regarded as a somewhat notorious postcode, but it remains a creative district filled with artisans. Marco describes the area as ‘a corner of great tranquility but also great vitality – that Milanese industriousness made up of specialised workshops.’

And although not a maker like his neighbours, he has certainly been tireless in his creativity; working his magic on the villa, which had fallen into disrepair. After many years’ work, visitors are rewarded by a theatrical beauty that offers a taste of the house in its heyday. The rich palette of reds and greens was inspired by a trip to Copenhagen in the 1990s, where Marco was captivated by a sequence of burgundies and greens at the museum dedicated to Bertel Thorvaldsen. ‘I’ve changed some colours over the years: at one point, I wanted to have a cosier