Made in Italy Marble Kitchens Since 1976: The Aprilia Workshop

The story begins in 1976, when Michelessi opened its premises on the Via Pontina in Aprilia, between Rome and Latina, and began working marble for the building trade and the furniture industry. It has never stopped since: half a century of bespoke marble work, with the same care as on the first day. The workshop that carries the family name grew into a company without ceasing to be a workshop, and that is the first thing the phrase "Made in Italy since 1976" is meant to say.

Inside the workshop, highly skilled people specialise in one-off, made-to-measure pieces: craftsmen who know marble as few others in the area do, and who can take on any request, from the simplest threshold to the most complex project, working from your own drawings if you wish. Indoor marble kitchens and outdoor kitchens are born here, alongside staircases, floors, bathrooms, fireplaces and pools, and they share the same trade. The full story is told on the page Our story.

"Made in Italy" is a label you see everywhere; for a marble kitchen it is worth asking what it actually contains. In Michelessi's case the answer is concrete, and it can all be verified at a single address.

Every slab tells a story millions of years long, and no two are alike. That is why, in a marble kitchen, choosing the slab is not a catalogue detail: it is the first act of the project. In the Aprilia workshop the slab is chosen by looking at it, standing in front of it, with the drawing of the kitchen in hand.

• The veining is followed: worktop, splashback and the sides of the island are cut from the same slab, so that the natural pattern of the stone runs from one element to the next without a break.
• The colour is matched: the tone of the marble is judged against the doors, the floor and the light of the room, not against a photograph.
• The flaw is avoided: a trained eye reads the fracture lines and the more fragile zones and keeps them out of the worktop, or places them where they bear no load.

The same attention goes to the materials that sit beside marble in today's kitchens: natural stones, Dekton and composite stones, all presented in the Materials section of the site. The material changes; the way of choosing it does not.

The history of a marble workshop is also the history of its tools. At the heart of the workshop, the head of a CNC machining centre comes down onto a slab held on suction cups; water wraps the tool, cools the cut and carries the dust away. The movements are calibrated and repeat with the same precision on the first piece and on the thousandth: the sink cut-out, the hob openings, the joints between one piece and the next leave the machine with tolerances the hand alone could not guarantee.

But the machine, on its own, is not enough. It is the craftsman's hand that programmes it, chooses the slab and checks the result. Polishing is the moment of truth: that is when the slab reveals its veining and depth, and that is where finishing passes from the disc to the hand, on the edges, on the corners, in the joints that must disappear. This is what "half a century of craft" means: the gesture born in 1976 continues today, multiplied by technology but never replaced by it. The production cycle is described on the Craftsmanship page.

In a workshop like this, a Made in Italy marble kitchen passes through no intermediaries. The designer who listens to you works in the same building where the slab is cut; the person cutting the slab knows who it is for; the team fitting it in your home watched it being made. Every piece of marble work comes from the meeting of three people: the client, the designer and the maker. Keeping them under one roof has practical consequences:

• the measurements taken in your home go straight to the person programming the machine;
• a change during the work is discussed with the people who will carry it out, not with a dealer;
• delivery times are set out in the quotation, without depending on distant suppliers;
• responsibility for the finished work has a single name and a single address.

This short chain holds for projects far from Aprilia too. The kitchen travels from the Via Pontina workshop, where the overhead crane lowers the slabs onto the truck's A-frames and wooden crates protect them, to your home, in Italy or abroad: the Dubai project was born this way, with the same team from drawing to installation.

A project's journey has four acts, and they have been the same for fifty years.

• The design. Bring us an idea, a measurement, a photograph of the space. The technical office carries out the survey, prepares working drawings and 3D renders set into photographs of your space: you see the finished kitchen before the first cut. The quotation is free of charge and every item is discussed together.
• The workshop. The chosen slab meets the CNC machining centre; then hands finish edges, corners and surfaces. Quality is checked at every stage of the process.
• The departure. The pieces are packed in wooden crates and loaded at the Aprilia workshop, ready for the road.
• The installation. In your home the workshop's own team lays the worktop, takes the last measurement, closes the last joint. The room lights up: the journey is complete.

Marble remains the heart of the trade, but a kitchen today may call for other answers, and the workshop knows them. For indoor kitchens worktops are made in marble, Dekton, Fenix or quartz; for outdoor kitchens in marble, granite, quartzite, sintered stone or steel, with barbecues and ovens in refractory stone. In every case worktops come in typical thicknesses of 2 or 3 centimetres. Marble is calcium carbonate and reacts to acids: if you choose it for the kitchen, the workshop gives you clear guidance on protecting it and living with it; if you prefer a surface that asks for no attention, sintered stone is the most carefree option, machined with the same CNC precision and finished with the same care.

If you are thinking about a marble kitchen, indoors or outdoors, in Italy or abroad, tell us about it: write to info@michelessi.it, call +39 06 9275383 or message us on WhatsApp at +39 327 4764044. Our team will gather your requirements and prepare a free quotation, to be discussed together until we reach the right solution. All contact details are on the Contacts page: in Aprilia, on the Via Pontina, as it has been since 1976.