Italian design at DWR
At the tip of Italy’s heel, where the land narrows between two seas, sits a palace-turned-hotel where art and architecture allow daily life to move at a slower pace. Palazzo Daniele was built in 1861, when “Garibaldi was galloping up and down the peninsula,” says owner Gabriele Salini. Its historic interiors – restored by Milan-based architects Palomba Serafini – are the perfect backdrop for our new arrivals: Italian designs that settle as easily into a palazzo as they do into your own home.
Bring home Italian design
Elogio Sofa
Elogio is Italian for praise – specifically, Tobia Scarpa’s praise of domestic life, conversation, and well-being. GUBI's reissue of his 1974 design is made to be lived in: Its low profile shifts your center of gravity closer to the ground, and its cushions stack, elongate, or drape however the moment demands.
Opalia Console Table
Made by Glas Italia in Macherio, Patricia Urquiola's Opalia Console Table fuses fragments of recycled glass under heat to create undulating surfaces and suspended air bubbles – each piece unrepeatable by nature of how it was made.
Ratio Desk
Made by Glas Italia in Macherio, Piero Lissoni’s Ratio Desk is an exercise in controlled complexity: smoked glass boxes, cantilevered and overlapped, fixed by anodized aluminum joints. The ash drawer runs smoothly on velvet inserts, while a cylindrical leg grounds it as functional sculpture.
F300 Lounge Chair
Debuting in 1965, Pierre Paulin's F300 Chair was an instant icon – added to MoMA's permanent collection and appearing on Star Trek. Today it's made in Italy using HiREK, a material derived from industrial plastic waste.
Instant
atmosphere
“The frescoes here tell the story of the land,” says Sarah Jade, Palazzo Daniele’s house manager and creative director. A Nordic Knots rug works in the same way – not decoration, but foundation. Designed in Stockholm and handwoven by skilled artisans in India, each is made to bring that same art underfoot.
A PALACE OF WHISPERS
By David Plaisant
“What I really love about this place,” says Gabriele Salini, the Roman hotelier who bought and renovated Palazzo Daniele, “is that here in tiny Gagliano, right at the bottom of the Salento, you open the doors and are suddenly transported somewhere magical.”
Heavy wooden doors open into a lofty hall and through to a courtyard where orange trees cast soft shadows across the pale patina of the walls. Inside, frescoed ceilings rise above cavernous rooms furnished with deliberate restraint. “You’re invited to whisper when you enter,” says Salini, pointing out that this lowering of tone is almost instinctive. “Of course, we don’t impose silence here, but I think the quietness is suggested by the building itself.”
The facade is constructed from warm, honey-colored pietra leccese limestone characteristic of the peninsula. The palazzo reflects a southern interpretation of aristocratic architecture – less concerned with urban spectacle than with climate, landscape, and domestic rhythm. Thick stone walls temper the summer heat, vaulted ceilings amplify light and air, and rooms unfold around internal courtyards that draw the outside inward.
Salini first encountered Palazzo Daniele through his friendship with the curator Francesco Petrucci, whose family owned the crumbling palace and had begun opening it to artists as part of town’s Capo d’Arte festival. “Palazzo Daniele started not as a hotel but by inviting our creative friends – photographers, designers, artists, and musicians – to stay with us,” Salini recalls.
He entrusted the restoration to Milan-based architects Ludovica Serafini and Roberto Palomba of Palomba Serafini Associati. Rather than redesigning the palace, they worked by subtraction – preserving historic surfaces, keeping furnishings minimal, and allowing the monumental scale of the rooms to remain largely uninterrupted. In one room, a shower stands at the center of a towering frescoed space, water falling from the high ceiling into a basin designed by Italian artist Andrea Sala. Another intervention: the palazzo’s holy chapel, now an honesty bar.
The story of Palazzo Daniele doesn’t end with architecture or design — it opens outward to the culture of Salento. Guests are introduced to “cucina di casa” (home cooking) through sessions led by local cooks, whose recipes reflect generations of family tradition. Ceramics, basket-weaving, and other crafts are regularly presented through workshops and collaborations, allowing visitors to encounter practices that remain deeply rooted in the area.
Here, beauty is not theatrical or overwhelming but gently pervasive, something discovered gradually – in the play of light on old plaster, in a shared meal, or in the simple pleasure of lingering a little longer than expected.
