This 700-Square-Foot Apartment in Rome Is Made to Measure for a Young Couple

The shared passions and interests of a young creative couple—Cinzia, an illustrator, and Arcangelo, a journalist and a voracious reader—were the starting point for the redesign of their 700-square-foot apartment. Paros Architettura founders and designers Eugenia Rolando and Federico Patacchiola created Casa Vetulonia for the couple, a minimalist living space in Rome’s San Giovanni neighborhood.

“The rooms were treated like white canvases, with only a few targeted pops of color similar to the embroideries and illustrations that Cinzia creates,” Eugenia explains. Meanwhile, books—Arcangelo’s beloved collectables—were given a leading role. “They became protagonists of the space, creating suspended sightlines that guide you into the apartment,” adds Federico.

Their neighborhood, San Giovanni, is also known as Appio Latino, after the Via Appia and the Via Latina, Roman roads that passed through the area. The name fittingly hints at the area’s juxtaposition of modern architecture and ancient Roman ruins. And so, in one of the Italian capital’s oldest and most historic neighborhoods, a “simple” apartment comes to life. “Simple doesn’t mean shallow,” Cinzia wrote in her blog, where she also stated that “simplicity is complexity resolved,” a quote from the great sculptor Constantin Brancusi. That same appreciation of purity and authenticity guided Eugenia and Federico in their renovation project. In fact, the arrangement of the rooms follows the original layout of the early 1940s, characterized by a long central corridor that acts as a divider, opening onto the various rooms, “using specific interventions to improve the usability of the space,” emphasize the architects.

Casa Vetulonia makes light the fulcrum of the home, making its way into every corner, and even the hallway—usually one of the gloomiest spaces in a house—is illuminated by light filtered through a circular porthole. That porthole is particularly adored by Cinzia and Archangel’s cat, Cat (no, that’s not a typo, it’s the pet’s actual name, like Holly Golightly’s sweet stray in Breakfast at Tiffany’s). What’s more, the main rooms feature colorful furniture—colors being of the utmost importance to Cinzia, the artistic half of the couple. A clear example of this is the custom-designed kitchen with turquoise cabinets and cobalt blue panels on its sliding doors. Service doors are masterfully camouflaged in the white rooms thanks to pocket doors flush with the walls.

Finally, in the bedroom, the space is dramatically transformed. Here, a vaulted ceiling frames the porthole, generating once again a play of light and volume that makes the space vibrate. “It is through these details that Cinzia’s aesthetics and Arcangelo’s interests merge with the house where they live,” conclude Eugenia and Federico.