The flamboyant Chinese Gallery is the centerpiece of Villar Perosa, the 18th-century Northern Italian estate that has been style leader Marella Agnelli’s country home since 1953. She restored the vaulted space with the help of French decorator Stephane Boudin.
A sofa designed by Stephane Boudin spans one end of the piano nobile’s main salon, which is decorated with panels of antique Chinese wallpaper; the Italian chandelier dates from the 18th century.
Eighteenth-century painted-stucco decorations enliven the main salon on the piano nobile; the consoles are Piedmontese antiques, and the open doors lead to the famous Chinese Gallery.
An 18th-century landscape by V. A. Cignaroli surmounts a sofa in another salon, while the easel holds a painting of the Marchioness of Prie, a former owner of the villa; the carpet is an antique Aubusson.
Card games were traditionally played in the salone da gioco, where 18th-century Piedmontese portraits of a king and queen of Sardinia are displayed.
Majolica plaques ornament the walls of a dining room; the furnishings are antique.
Paintings by Armando Spadini (left) and Emmanuel Gondouin hang in the library, which Agnelli and Stephane Boudin created in the 1950s; the sofa is a Boudin design. The floral pyramids, here featuring dahlias, are an Agnelli hallmark.
Finely pleated fabric lines the television room; an 1880s Louis Vivin painting of a heron hangs above the antique sofa, amid 19th-century botanical illustrations.
On the top floor, the suite belonging to Marella Agnelli is embellished with a lively floral pattern.
For more than three decades, her husband, Gianni Agnelli, slept in this grand room on the piano nobile; the 18th-century bed is curtained with embroidered fabric of the same period.
Gianni Agnelli’s onetime bedroom on the piano nobile features a painted Piedmontese armoire; a Charles X Savonnerie carpet softens the terrazzo floor.
Decorated by Stephane Boudin in the 1950s, the Bishop’s Room features antique paintings set within carved moldings, an embroidered bed, and a Louis XV leather-clad sofa.
Adjacent to the original 1730s house, attributed to architect Filippo Juvarra, is the vine-covered children’s wing, constructed in the 1920s.
An entrance hall in the children’s wing, with the breakfast room beyond; the painted tall case clock is Louis XV.
Bronze busts and portraits of family membersare displayed in the children’s wing, which wasconstructed in the 1920s; the doors lead to bedrooms, and the large circa-1927 group portrait depicts Gianni Agnelli (left), his sisters Susanna and Clara, and their half-American mother, Virginia Bourbon del Monte.
Flowered borders outline a bedroom in the children’s wing; beside the French doors hangs a painting by Constant-Joseph Brochart.
A loggia is outfitted with rattan and wicker furniture.
The loggia on the piano nobile overlooks gardens refreshed and clarified in the 1950s by Marella Agnelli and landscape designer Russell Page.
Yews and boxwood embrace the Gothic Revival family chapel.
Inspired by 18th-century British architect Sir William Chambers’s chinoiserie work, Page devised a bridge over a small valley in the woodland garden.
Marella Caracciolo Chia - Oberto Gili - Howard Christian (source AD)
