When Dario Longo, a lawyer based in Milan, wanted to return to his hometown of Palermo he spent a long time searching for the right place. “I wanted to make peace with this beautiful, but hectic city with its hidden treasures,” he says. “I bought this house in 2013, after a long search,” he explains. “I was looking for an authentic historical building, but most of the old palaces I visited had been heavily refurbished so had lost most of their soul. When I saw this place I realised it was exactly what I was looking for.” His beautiful home in the Kalsa neighbourhood of the city spreads across two levels, from the second floor of a historical palace with origins dating back to the end of the 1500s, to a third floor he created from the original attic and terraces. But the authenticity he wanted came at a price: “The palazzo was in a state of disarray,” he says. It was also tied up in litigation – but none of that scared him away. He dived in – and has no regrets. Longo describes this enormous house as “a succession of four large ballrooms, one after the other, and a very small private quarter with only two bedrooms and one bathroom”. He’s kept that original layout, except for squeezing in three additional bathrooms. While the structural work was carried out by architects from Palermo, Longo curated the interior himself, with the assistance of restorer Davide Sansone. “At some point in the last century, probably in the 1950s, in an attempt to modernise the property, the owner covered all the frescoes and the lambris (panelling) with plaster and paint, except for the vaulted ceiling of one of the main rooms,” he says. “One of the things that made me buy this place was that frescoed vaulted ceiling. But I certainly did not expect that we would discover frescoes and lambris in the walls and ceilings in, literally, every single room of the house!” The monumental job of unearthing and restoring hundreds of square metres of frescoes has kept Sansone busy for the past three years – and is expected to continue for a couple more.