The Palazzo That Was a Cinema

Luigi Fragola Architects transforms a Florence rationalist 1950s palazzo — once the Ariston cinema — into ten Lungarno Collection residences layered in travertine, velvet, and local art.

Architecture reveals its richest stories when it resists becoming singular. Palazzo Ottaviani has been a cinema, a city landmark, and now, quietly, a home. Opened earlier this year as the Lungarno Collection's inaugural apartment residences in Florence's Santa Maria Novella district, the former Ariston cinema has been transformed by the San Giuliano family and Luigi Fragola Architects into ten serene dwellings. The 1950s rationalist shell remains unmistakable, yet its measured proportions and restrained geometry now frame an interior language that feels both timeless and unmistakably of the present.

The ten apartments range from one-bedroom to three-bedroom configurations, each with its own bathroom and kitchen. The interiors are layered with travertine, deep blue velvets, Rubelli fabrics, custom furnishings, and large-scale artworks by local Florentine artists — a material palette that balances timeless Italian luxury with the specific restraint of the rationalist tradition that shaped the building. Running throughout the scheme is a subtle homage to Giovanni Michelucci, the architect of Florence's iconic Santa Maria Novella train station directly nearby: marble portals, golden accents, and curvy windows recall his formal vocabulary without replicating it, anchoring the interior in its precise urban and architectural context.

A rationalist palazzo. A storied cinema. Ten luminous residences layered in travertine, velvet, and local art. Florence, distilled.

At the building's pinnacle sits the Rooftop Penthouse, with a 130-square-metre terrace and a bespoke marble painting of a peacock — the palazzo's chosen emblem — by Mexican artist Esteban Fuentes de Maria. The peacock is an apt symbol for a building that has transformed itself with this much deliberate elegance.

Palazzo Ottaviani is the first chapter of the Lungarno Collection's expansion into residential hospitality, and it sets the register for everything that follows: historically grounded, materially precise, and unmistakably Florentine.

Key takeaways

• Luigi Fragola Architects drew on the clean lines of 1940s rationalism and the formal vocabulary of Michelucci's nearby Santa Maria Novella train station — marble portals, golden accents, curvy windows — to create an interior language for Palazzo Ottaviani that is simultaneously contemporary and deeply rooted in its Florentine architectural context.
• The ten residences, ranging from one to three bedrooms and each complete with its own bathroom and kitchen, are furnished with travertine, deep blue velvets, Rubelli fabrics, custom pieces, and large-scale works by local artists — a layered material approach that positions the Lungarno Collection's first residential apartments as collector's interiors rather than conventional hospitality units.
• The Rooftop Penthouse, with a 130-square-metre terrace and a bespoke marble peacock painting by Mexican artist Esteban Fuentes de Maria, crowns a building that has moved from rationalist palazzo to storied cinema to luxury residence — each transformation adding a layer to an address that now carries its entire history quietly in its bones.