Italian Marble Kitchens for Switzerland and St. Moritz

Michelessi SRL has been working marble in Aprilia, on the Via Pontina between Rome and Latina, since 1976. Half a century of stone, one workshop and one showroom: here every kitchen is drawn, cut and finished before it sets out for the home that commissioned it. Switzerland, with its chalets in the Engadin, its lakeside houses and its apartments in Zurich, Geneva and Lugano, is a destination we prepare for with particular care, because an alpine home asks a great deal of its materials: long winters, dry heated rooms, snow at the door and a kitchen that is the warm heart of the house for months on end.

We are a marble workshop, not a dealer, and we do not work from a catalogue. From Aprilia come indoor kitchens in marble and stone, outdoor kitchens in marble, granite, quartzite, sintered stone and stainless steel, barbecues and ovens in refractory stone, and the bathrooms, floors and fireplaces that carry the same stone through the house. Everything is designed and built in Italy by our own team, and installed abroad as well.

A marble kitchen is a single piece, born from one slab and cut for one room, and in Aprilia the work still follows the order it has followed since 1976.

• Slabs chosen one by one. Every slab is examined for veining, colour and soundness; for a kitchen we look for two that can be book-matched.
• Numerical control, then the hand. Cutting is done on CNC centres, to the millimetre; finishing is done by hand, because the edge of a worktop is something a machine does not see.
• Thicknesses and details. Worktops are typically 2 or 3 centimetres thick; the solid-block effect is obtained by mitring down the sides, so that the veining turns the corner.

The alpine house has its own grammar: larch and old spruce, split-face stone around the hearth, low winter light across the snow. Marble and stone enter that grammar naturally, provided they are chosen with care. The Saint-Moritz vision on our pages shows how we imagine a chalet in the Engadin: a great fireplace in split-face Luserna stone rising to antique larch beams, a private spa in Taj Mahal quartzite, a four-metre table in Port Laurent marble and a master bathroom in Cristallo quartzite. It is a project vision from our drawing board, not a delivered commission: it shows how we would approach a house above the clouds.

Switzerland is close: from Zurich or Geneva a short flight brings you to Rome, with Aprilia less than an hour further on. Some clients come once, to stand in front of the slabs; the rest can be done from home.

Measurements

We ask for photographs of the room, hand-drawn measurements of the walls, and the position of windows, sockets, drains and appliances. If an architect or a contractor is working on the chalet, we receive their drawings directly; where the project calls for it, our own team checks the final measurements on site before cutting.

The 3D design

From the measurements comes the three-dimensional design: your kitchen set in your room, with the units, the finishes and the veining of the slab we propose. You review it, refine it with us and approve it before a single cut is made: what you see in the drawing is what comes out of the crate.

Samples sent to your door

Alpine light is not Roman light, and a marble cannot be judged on a screen. We send samples of the stones and finishes under consideration, so that you can set them beside your larch and your floor, at midday and at dusk. The final slab is then photographed in full and approved by you.

Video calls with the workshop

Over a video call we show you the slabs available, the one chosen before cutting, the work in progress and, where the project allows, the kitchen dry-assembled before packing. We follow every project in Italian and English.

Every element is packed in Aprilia as soon as it is finished: pieces are protected individually, braced in crates built to the size of the load and numbered in the order of installation. The 3D design travels with the shipment like a map. Transport across the Alps, the timing and the formalities that a delivery to Switzerland involves are defined in the quotation; for a mountain site we plan the delivery with you around the season and the access to the house.

Installation is carried out by our own team: the artisans who followed the work in Aprilia travel with their tools, level the worktops, close the joints along the veining and hand over a kitchen ready for use. Where a local contractor is involved, we coordinate them with working drawings. Appliances and services are specified according to the destination country.

Indoors, Calacatta, Bianco Carrara and Statuario bring light into rooms that see little of it in winter; Nero Marquina and Port Laurent answer the dark timber of a chalet; travertine and honed finishes are kind to a kitchen used every day. Where the worktop must take everything, Dekton, quartz or Fenix can be paired with a marble island; quartzite is the stone we imagine for bathrooms and private spas. Dry, heated rooms do no harm to stone, and a honed or brushed finish hides the traces of daily life better than a mirror polish.

Outdoors, at altitude, stone lives with frost, thaw and strong sun. For a terrace or a garden in the mountains we favour dense stones with low porosity, such as granite, quartzite and sintered stone; marble finds its place on sheltered terraces, in honed finishes. Each choice is made together, on the basis of the site and the exposure.

A terrace above a lake in Ticino, a garden on the shores of Lake Geneva, the sunny side of a chalet where one grills with snow still on the peaks: there an outdoor kitchen makes sense, and we build it to measure with barbecue, sink, burners, wood-fired or gas oven. For the fire itself we use refractory stone, the very material ovens are made of: born to stand beside the flame, it holds the heat over time. We use no cement and we do not build in masonry outdoors, because repeated heating and cooling wear the structure down, and after a few years it gives way.

A photograph of the room, hand-drawn measurements and an idea are enough. Write to info@michelessi.it or on WhatsApp, in English or Italian: you will receive a first assessment, then the 3D design and a quotation with production time, transport and installation defined for Switzerland. Since 1976 our marble has left Aprilia for homes in Italy and abroad, and the Alps have never been far. More on our page devoted to Italian marble kitchens worldwide and on the contacts page.