How Interior Designer Caroline Gidiere Spent a Perfect Day in Florence
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“I don’t know how much Googling it would have taken me to get to this. In fact, I don’t think you could get there!”
Interior designer Caroline Gidiere is describing the consummately immersive day she spent in Florence last year—a series of intimate studio visits and conversations with artisans created specifically for her by travel advisor Ragan Stone of Ragan Stone Travel at The Travel Studio, a jewel box travel lifestyle shop and consultancy based in Gidiere’s home base of Birmingham, Alabama.
“I was planning a family trip with my husband and children to Italy,” Gidiere says, “but within that I wanted a day that would inform and inspire me in my work. I knew it had to be Florence, and I wanted to focus on process, but I didn’t know whom or what to ask for. I handed it to Ragan and she built a remarkable, very behind-the-scenes day for me.”
Scooped up at The Place Firenze hotel by Georgia—her concierge, guide and translator (“I speak French but needed help with Italian,” Gidiere confesses)—the pair spent the day on foot—the only and best way to navigate the narrow streets of Florence—fortified by espresso and macchiato at Bistrot Santarosa before tucking into the near-hidden atelier of muralist Francesca Guicciardini.
For Gidiere, this was not just a discovery—she was not yet familiar with Guicciardini’s breathtaking work as a muralist—but also the beginning of a new working relationship. “We did a deep dive on color selection, leafed through her amazing collection of old wallpapers and archival papers she uses for inspiration, and looked at several projects she was in the midst of,” Gidiere says. “We got along so well! More than anything, I just want to work with her, and I know she wants to work in the United States. I feel like there’s a real moment for scenics right now and I want to have the project where I can call and say, ‘Francesca, come do this for me.’”
It can’t be a visit to Florence without a garden moment, and Gidiere indulged her husband’s love of horticulture (“He’s a huge Monty Don fan,” she says) by meeting up with the family next at Giardino Torrigiani in the heart of the city for a private tour with Marquis Vanni Torrigiani, a descendant of the Florentine family that bought the circa-16th -century property in the early 19th century and expanded and revived the gardens in peak English Romantic style.
“Vanni walked us through these extraordinary gardens—statuary, clock towers, plantings—and he was so humble, so down to earth,” Gidiere says. “Such a character!” An added delight: a visit with contemporary sculptor Matteo Baroni, whose large-scale iron installation at Giardini Torrigiani hangs a swing from a domed “growth” of wisteria vines. “It’s so beautiful,” Gidiere says, “It blows your mind. You can’t believe it’s not wisteria.”
For Gidiere, beyond the delight was a professional takeaway. “In so many places, the outside is an extension of the inside,” she says. “My clients often ask me to meet with their landscape architect, and I love to bring photos I collect of garden details—walls, hedges, how they meet. It was stunning to see acanthus used as a ground cover here. We’re so used to seeing it in Roman architecture as a detail, but to see it like this, growing everywhere, was amazing. It’s so beautiful.”
Even lunch was an event: a tiny table in the back of Trattoria Cammillo, a “really, really old school Florentine place,” Gidiere says, where the owner served plate after plate of local, fresh dishes. “It was artichoke season,” she says. “We had fresh pasta, fresh fish. The owner was a friend of Georgia’s and he picked out our wines for us. It was so wonderful.”
From there, Gidiere indulged her family in one more stop—a cyanotype workshop at Il Bisonte, Florence’s school and gallery founded by Maria Luigia Guaita in 1959 and now run by her nephew Simone Guaita as a foundation reviving the art of lithography and printmaking. “We’d been to Boboli Gardens the day before and had collected some leaves to use in the workshop,” she says. “While our prints were developing, Simone toured us through the incredible historic buildings. It was fascinating.” Now, Gidiere says, her family’s own Florentine printmaking hangs in their home. “They’re such a fantastic souvenir of our trip,” she says, “of our day.”
A family moment, yes, but then Gidiere peeled off with Georgina to do some shopping. “We said arrivederci to my husband and kids,” she cracks. The women stopped in at vintage boutique 9 rosso on the Borgo San Jacopo: “a real Wunderkammer,” Gidiere says, citing the 16th-century term for a private collection of curiosities (takeaway: a ring featuring a mystery blue stone that she says everyone now asks her about). Sticking to the Borgo San Jacopo, she stopped in at Roberta Firenze for some leather gloves and then on to Aprosio, a veritable “heaven of handmade beaded accessories,” she says. “Wisteria was in bloom when we were there,” she says, “so I bought a pair of dangly wisteria earrings. I love that color of pale lavender; it’s everywhere in my house.”
In addition to those treasured souvenirs, Gidiere says she came home with a new and lasting connection. “I’ve always been a Francophone and loyal to that brand,” she says, laughing. But now, she says, she’s utterly captivated by Florence—and Italy in general. “I fell deeply in love on this trip,” she says. “I continue to think about it on a daily basis. And then I think, ‘When am I going back?’”
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