“It did have a beautiful umbrella vault ceiling, though, so I thought, ‘OK, we’ll fake the fresco,’” smiles Gottl, dressed in a linen blazer with a patterned silk cravat. “I had a whole plan to copy an amazing one in the palace owned by the Etro family in Puglia.” But when he hired Renova to take on the renovation, fresco specialist Patricia Gili made a happy discovery. “She scraped the ceiling with a teaspoon and sure enough, the colour popped out,” he says. “I mean, I practically had an orgasm.”