Trending now
HOUSE TOUR | ROOMS & GARDENS | WORLD OF CABANA
When designer Gordon Guillaumier first bought his piano nobile of a faded townhouse in "novelesque" Senglea, his family were skeptical. The neighbourhood, once grand, had become rough around the edges—but its view onto Malta’s Grand Harbour was something out of a painting. Over time, and with quiet devotion, Gordon pieced the home back together, stone by golden stone. Jamie Sharp visits a home where Milanese style meets Maltese soul.
BY JAMIE SHARP | ROOMS & GARDENS | 31 MAY 2025
The mythology around Malta’s Grand Harbour runs deep. In use since Phonecian times, it was the stage of The Great Siege where the Ottoman Corsair Dragut was defeated by the Knights of the Order of Malta. Hundreds of years later the harbour would witness Napoleon’s fleet arriving at Fortress Island’s capital, Valletta. And a century later its inhabitants would be awarded the George Cross by the King for their stoicism and bravery, having received some of the heaviest Nazi shelling in all of Europe.
Entering through an elegant Baroque doorway on an unassuming street, the harbour comes into spectacular, almost unbelievable, view. The fortifications, staggeringly beautiful and rendered from golden limestone, are framed like paintings by large French windows.
When Gordon Guillaumier, at the time an undergraduate, told his family that he had bought the piano nobile of a once grand house in the neighborhood of Senglea (‘Isla’ in Maltese), they were less than enthusiastic. Senglea, which is one of Malta’s ancient cities and faces on to the Grand Harbour, had long been considered rough around the edges.
Popular with British sailors and locals working in the nearby dry docks, at the time it had that same feeling of dilapidated grandeur that can be found in Naples or Genoa. Washing was strung between windows to dry, and small convenience stores and sailors' bars opened in their grand entrance halls, spilling onto the street. Locals left their front doors open, with cane blinds rolled halfway over the doorway to keep out the midday sun. Today Senglea has become a fashionable neighbourhood and the property is sought after, luckily its streets still retain their novelesque atmosphere.
In the 1990s and 2000s, it was this ever present feeling of history, as well as affordable prices, that began to attract young creatives with an eye for the unusual.
Gordon was first drawn to the Grand Harbour—and then to his home in Senglea—through its depiction in art. “My Maltese roots and interest in the history of my country had led me to slowly discover this unfashionable place in my youth, especially through paintings depicting the Grand Harbour and the Three Cities; Senglea, Victoriosa and Cospicua, by artists like Schranz and Gianni, but also M.C. Escher who painted scenes of Senglea during his Grand Tour of the Mediterranean," he tells Cabana.
The first apartment he bought - purchased from an Englishman in 1989 - was the piano nobile of a once splendid townhouse, which had been split into apartments after the war. This was a common story as noble Maltese families lost their grip on their estates in a period of economic hardship. When the floor above, home to a Swiss pilot, came up for sale in 2002, Gordon took the opportunity to unify them, reopening a winding servant’s staircase between the two that had been sealed up for a century. The main piano nobile underwent two restorations: the first while Gordon was still a student, working with a minimal budget, and the second when he was finally able to make the house comfortable year-round, adding central heating and refining earlier work.
The upper level, with its roof terrace, required the undoing of a number of misguided alterations by the previous owner, restoring its original character in the process. The home's interiors are marked by the superb quality of its stonework, with spectacular cartouches and baroque motifs adorning doorways. Maltese stone, a kind of limestone, is golden in color and unusually soft, meaning the island enjoys some of the most fanciful and creative stone carving in the Mediterranean world.
Gordon’s life in Milan, with his partner Rodolfo, had an influence on the interiors, giving them a stylish, and unmistakably Milanese, edge. It works surprisingly well so far south. Contemporary paintings and ceramics sit above pale blue and white zig-zag tiled floors, while Caltagirone and Burgio sit in conversation with early pieces from Malta’s quirky Villa Bologna Pottery. The house offers respite for Gordon. “There is a very comforting feeling here that nothing, or at least very little, has changed over the years in this magical town”.
Latest Articles
