Some find Venice is particularly beautiful in the winter when its canals and piazzas have fewer tourists, but Nora Witzigmann would rather not have to pick any particular season as her favorite. She spends as much time as possible in this fabled Italian city, regardless of the time of year. While her apartment there was initially intended as only a weekend getaway, it has long since become a true second home for the interior designer.
Nora fell in love with the city with its old palazzi, narrow streets, and glittering waterways around eight years ago. At the time, she had set up a hotel in Venice and regularly commuted between the city and her other home, Munich. “If someone had asked me before whether I could imagine ever owning an apartment in Venice, it would have sounded like a fantastic dream,” she says, laughing. “I’m the typical renter who doesn’t ever want to be tied down.” From her professional background, Nora knows how stressful owning a property can be and the commitment it often represents. “I wasn’t one of those people who leaps to buying a home in a different city just because I’ve enjoyed a vacation there,” she says.
But then came Venice, and her attitude changed. Nora began to look for apartments and found one she liked in the northeast of the city, a quiet corner far away from the crowds of tourists. With the help of her friends Alvise and Lucia Marzollo from Venice–based architectural firm dd2800a, she rearranged the floor plan and removed walls. The ceiling was stripped, windows enlarged, even the structure of the house was refined; only the terrazzo floor—a feature she loved—remained.
Where walls were removed, Nora filled the gaps with mosaic tiles, a reminder of what came before, like a visible memory—fitting for a city that still lives very much in the past. Nora’s alterations created a long, airy, and bright living room with an open kitchen, which is adjacent to the bedroom; a new partition wall placed between the common spaces and the sleeping area, with its own integrated windows, is made of walnut and birch, the result of a collaboration with a local carpenter. At the opposite end of the living room from the kitchen, around a corner, is a small guest room.
Living in Italy also means making use of the outdoors: One of the most beautiful places in the apartment is the large terrace overlooking an inner courtyard. There is also a narrow balcony that is almost 56 feet long that runs the entire length of the apartment.