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Central Park penthouse at sunset: the Nero Marquinia fireplace wall lit by the fire and the window over the park, a Michelessi vision

Project vision

A penthouse above Central Park,
where stone awaits the setting sun

A Michelessi design vision: Aprilia marble at the very top of Manhattan.

The vision

Darkness is the curtain,
marble plays the lead

Imagine ascending to the very top of Manhattan, as the sun slips behind the trees of Central Park and the city becomes a stage. This is where the «New York» vision is born: a penthouse conceived as a sequence of scenes, in which darkness serves as the curtain and marble takes the leading role.

Nero Marquinia, deep and traversed by candid veining, gives body to a monumental fireplace; Calacatta Oro, with its golden glints, carves a kitchen that is pure sculpture. Every slab in this vision is selected, cut and honed in our Aprilia workshop, where since 1976 the hands of our master craftsmen have turned stone into architecture.

We present to you a Michelessi project: not a promise, but our understanding of luxury — quiet, material, destined to outlast the city that surrounds it.

Monumental floor-to-ceiling fireplace in Nero Marquinia, the flame as the drawing room’s only warm light, a Michelessi vision

Nero Marquinia

The monumental
fireplace

At the heart of the drawing room, the fireplace is no detail: it is a monolith. Nero Marquinia rises from floor to ceiling in a single dark wall, its white veins running like petrified lightning. The flame is the scene’s only source of warm light: it kindles the honed surface, sets the burnished brass surround aglow, and leaves the rest of the room in shadow. We have imagined every joint invisible, every slab laid in continuous veining, so that the fire appears to burn within the very mountain from which the marble was quarried. Before it, two armchairs turned towards the flame: the city can wait.

Monolithic kitchen island in Calacatta Oro under a single beam of light, slender brass profiles in the darkness, a Michelessi vision

Calacatta Oro

The sculptural
kitchen

The kitchen is conceived as a sculpture hall. Out of the darkness rises a monolithic island in Calacatta Oro: golden veins cross the worktop and fall down its flanks in an unbroken waterfall edge. A single beam of light strikes it from above, like a spotlight upon its subject; the surrounding walls retreat into matt black, and only a slender brass profile, fine as a thread of gold, traces the volumes. In the Aprilia workshop we have provided for three sister slabs, orientated so that the vein runs as a single breath. Here one does not merely cook: each evening, a small rite of light and stone is performed.

Drawing room with a full-height window over Central Park at sunset and a Roman travertine floor, a Michelessi vision

Roman travertine

The drawing room
over the park

Then the scene opens: a full-height window frames Central Park at the hour when the sun sinks behind the West Side. The Roman travertine floor, honed rather than polished, gathers that light and returns it like a still lake; the sunset enters the room and sets the stone’s veining alight with copper. A lone figure, seen from behind, stands before the glass, measuring the distance between the stone of Rome and the towers of Manhattan. This is the instant for which the entire vision was composed: the moment the park becomes a painting, and marble its most faithful frame.

Monolithic bath hollowed from Nero Marquinia at the centre of the bathroom, book-matched slabs on the walls, a Michelessi vision

Nero Marquinia

The master
bathroom

The final scene is the most intimate. In the master bathroom, a monolithic bath hollowed from a single block of Nero Marquinia rests at the centre of the room like a boat at anchor. The still water reflects a single suspended lamp; brushed-gold taps are the one accent the darkness allows. On the walls, book-matched slabs compose symmetrical wings of white veining, mirrored like a drawing carved into the night. We have designed this room so that time slows within it: outside, thirty floors below, New York rushes on; in here there exist only stone, water and your evening.

Your vision

A vision
can become home

This is our idea of New York: if it speaks to you, tell us yours. In our Aprilia workshop we design and craft bespoke marble fireplaces, kitchens, floors and bathrooms, for penthouses, homes and spaces that deserve stone.

Contact us