Canal chic

LIVING IN VENICE:Buying and renovating an apartment in an 18th-century building in Venice proved challenging for a Dublin family - but it has been worth all the hard work

HOW DO YOU get a sofa into a third-floor apartment in Venice? The doorway is small, the stone stairway is narrow, steep and uneven and, before you get that far, what about the fact that there aren't any roads for delivery lorries, never mind loading bays or parking spaces? There aren't even any cars. Sitting at a cafe table in Campo Ruga, one of Venice's pretty, hidden squares, you begin to get an idea. Handcarts occasionally trundle by: this one is stacked with boxes, that one with a fridge-freezer, yet another is collecting bags of refuse. Later, on a vaporetto(one of the city's waterbuses), we see all these rubbish bags being picked up by boat to take them wherever Venice dumps its trash; which is definitely not into the canals – they are a gorgeous greeny blue, and remarkably free of floating "stuff". There seems to be little that Venetian ingenuity cannot accomplish. The building of the city itself, an extravaganza of carved marble and stone, resting on millions of wooden pilings, driven into the mud of the lagoon floor, is foremost among its achievements.

The problems of buying, renovating and redesigning a Venetian apartment could be more than enough to put even the bravest of house-buyers off, but one Irish family who had a go are now reaping the rewards with a fantastic place to call their own, right in the heart of one of the world’s most fascinating cities. David O’Donoghue and Eileen Maguire fell in love with Venice on a birthday trip in 2004. Returning later to ring in the New Year, the couple decided to rent an apartment rather than stay in a hotel. “The main reason was to have more space in the evenings for the kids. We also wanted to be able to make coffee in the mornings, open a bottle of wine at night, and feel like real Venetians visiting the supermarket for supplies,” says Maguire. “The seeds were sown. I began googling when we got home and three weeks later had meetings set up with Venetian estate agents, solicitors and an accountant.” She tells me this with a level of enthusiasm that makes me think it might be the easiest thing in the world to do.

The apartment at Campo Ruga was the first one the couple viewed, although they looked at many more before finally deciding. Away from the relentless throngs of the tourist spots, their apartment is in the Castello district, in a quieter, residential part of Venice, yet it is only a pleasant stroll to Piazza San Marco, Rialto and all the bustle of the city. Wandering down to the Giardini vaporettostop, we pass little delicatessens, a bakery, a shop containing enormous flasks of local wine (you bring your own containers to be filled and prices are unbelievably low), and one of Venice's last fruit and vegetable barges, which is doing a roaring trade. Walk along Via Garibaldi (it was a canal, but Napoleon had it covered over and paved), past Giorgione's restaurant where they sing to you over your supper, and you're soon looking out over the Lagoon.

The fact that Maguire has a degree in Italian (which she studied together with art history) made unravelling the intricacies of the Italian way of doing business easier. “It definitely helps,” she says. “The first summer at college, I au-paired in Florence, and the second year I worked in Rome. I had five jobs over the course of the summer: everything from working in the Vatican to hotel receptionist to serving in a shop.” Buying and doing up the top floor of the 18th-century building was also made possible by a helpful estate agent, who introduced them to local architect Silvia Zecchin.

“Silvia is proud of it,” says O’Donoghue. “And justifiably so. She had to manage it in its entirety, and make lots of decisions for us, as we couldn’t be there all the time. We trusted she had a good sense of what we would be happy with – mostly this came down to clean unfussy finishes, and price.” Was it an expensive undertaking? “Not in the beginning,” O’Donoghue says with a rueful smile. “There were a lot of planning restrictions,” adds Maguire. “And that dictated things to a huge degree.” There was a city-wide survey of all Venetian buildings undertaken after the second World War, and all building plans are officially filed with the Venice Commune (local authority), so renovations have to be undertaken within strict guidelines based on that. “Using a Venetian architect, who was more than familiar with the regulations and the ‘ways of this city’, meant she succeeded in getting a design accepted that as outsiders we would have found impossible.”

By opening up the ceiling space, revealing the ancient oak beams and curved terracotta roof tiles, taking down some walls and building others, and adding an altana(tiny roof terrace), Zecchin made a space that feels contemporary, yet reminds you of the layers of history of the building. It's a bit of a puzzle box: a glassed-in staircase ought to lead to bedrooms, but instead takes you to the altana, and the three bedrooms are instead tucked away to one side. There is cleverly hidden storage space, furniture that is a mixture of funky and cleanly contemporary from Stua and IKEA, plus some quirky older touches, such as the Venetian mezzo marinaio(a decorated hook on a pole made for a gondolier to pull his gondola in to dock), which came from a ramshackle old antique shop somewhere in the city.

It’s also full of art. This is partly because of O’Donoghue’s job: he runs Dublin’s Stoney Road Press, where, together with James O’Nolan, he makes prints for many of Ireland’s leading artists. It is also due to O’Donoghue and Maguire’s generosity. When they first bought the apartment, they let their artist friends stay to soak up the sights and sounds of the city. Art works painted during these times (by artists including Janet Mullarney, John Cronin, Charles Tyrrell, Richard Gorman, Carmel Benson, Fergus Feehily, Taffina Flood and Felicity Clear) were left behind like thank-you notes, and today lots of these little treasures are gaily framed and hung on the walls. A box of watercolour paints and paper are provided for future guests to leave more mementoes behind.

These days, O'Donoghue and Maguire and their three children (Julia, eight, Charlie, seven, and Thanh, four, who was adopted from Vietnam) stay as often as possible. The children love it, although their parents say they are "very lazy about learning Italian". But they do get across what they need: "They can all say: ' pizza Margherita e gelato per favore'." Venice is definitely a fantastic place for children. Yes, getting lost is a hazard of wandering around, but stick together and it's also part of the fun, and once you've got over the fear that the kids might fall into canals, it's an incredibly safe city: there are no cars or scooters, so there's no traffic danger. Julia, Charlie and Thanh also love to go swimming at the Lido in summer, and to the Giardini, where they can play table-tennis in the open air.

Maguire and O’Donoghue rent Campo Ruga when they’re not there. It sleeps up to eight people, and prices start at €130 a night. Stay a few days, sleep under massive oak beams, enjoy coffee in the square, prosecco by a canal and risotto in one of the little restaurants hidden down Venice’s beguiling alleyways, and you might soon start musing about the possibilities of getting furniture into your own Venetian apartment. “It’s a sort of alternative pension plan for us,” says O’Donoghue. “Being self-employed in Ireland, we never quite got around to one in the conventional sense, and the idea of putting money into a pension fund, administered by god knows who and invested in god knows what, didn’t appeal.”

See camporuga.com