He Fell in Love With a Venetian Palazzo. But Why Did It Seem So Familiar?

A DECADE OR so ago, Nicholas Ward-Jackson woke up one morning determined to get out of Venice. After nearly five years, the English art dealer and his wife, Margherita, an Italian psychotherapist, had outgrown their small home and were tired of the tourists. But the day before their scheduled return to London, where they have another residence, Ward-Jackson, now in his 80s, received a call from a real estate agent cousin of Margherita’s about a listing in Dorsoduro, a more intimate neighborhood separated from the crowded cafes of Piazza San Marco by the Grand Canal. Reluctantly, he agreed to tour the property: a 3,500-square-foot apartment on the piano nobile, or second floor, of a 17th-century palazzo. As he walked around the main hall — a “very scruffy” space, he recalls, with three bedrooms on one side and a study and the kitchen on the other — he was struck by how familiar it felt. On his way out, he bumped into an older woman. “Nicholas, how lovely to see you,” she said. “Are you back to buy your old flat?”

Ward-Jackson was surprised to realize that he’d spent time there as a teenager. His father, William, whose family owned part of a newspaper syndicate in South Africa, traveled regularly for work; during a few of his extended stays abroad, Ward-Jackson’s mother, Catherine, had rented that very apartment for herself, her eldest son and his two brothers. Although Ward-Jackson didn’t recognize the place, it must have left an impression: He had gone on to become a collector of works by 18th-century Veneto artists and, in the 1980s, he’d encouraged the English filmmaker Derek Jarman, who died in 1994, to direct “Caravaggio,” a movie that Ward-Jackson co-wrote about the life of the early 17th-century Baroque painter. Being in that sunlit hall again reminded him of all that he loves about Venice: the bookstores and the operas; late nights by the water (“I can’t really explain the quality of the darkness — it’s as if you’re being covered in velvet”).

The couple decided to give Venice another chance. To restore their new home, they hired Mariangela Zanzotto, an Italian architect and art historian known for preserving churches and other public buildings in the area. Margherita, in her mid-50s, and Ward-Jackson haven’t always shared the same ideas about design — she likes modern art and furniture; his taste skews more traditional — but they agreed on one important point: that the interiors should evoke the spirit of Venice without being too literal. “There’s always a temptation here to go for a really old look,” says Ward-Jackson on a blustery afternoon this past April. “But Mariangela made it quite contemporary.” Zanzotto, who worked on the project for nearly two years, sourced local materials such as Istrian stone for the countertops and Marmorino plaster (a combination of limestone and powdered marble) for the walls. “I don’t like to do something in a fake style,” she says. Her goal, she adds, was to “show the soul of Venice.”