Restaurant and Café Rigodon Rieti by Tommaso Guerra.

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Among the picturesque alleys of the newly renovated small historic village of Rieti, nearby the church and the library, Tommaso Guerra has been invited to design the new restaurant and café Rigodon.

Tommaso Guerra Architect designed the new restaurant and café Rigodon

In a culturally rich literary and musical environment, the Rigodon café integrates harmoniously, with a guise of the magnificent epoch, when theatre was amongst the most exciting of arts. The atmosphere recalls an Italian theatre of the begging of the last century. We enter the main hall through a pair of red velvet curtains. Here a small island of sofas and armchairs finely refurbished and upholstered with damask fabric invites us to take a brake, have a drink, or dinner.

Tommaso Guerra Architect designed the new restaurant and café Rigodon

Under a grand crystal chandelier near an antique black wooden piano, the tables custom built with a very dark hickory. The atmosphere is very elegant, warm and romantic. The teal green walls are split by a wooden cornice covered in gold leaf. The wall lights are in bronze and crystal. At the far end of the main hall beyond the velvet bench and small tables, a luminous structure hangs from the wall.

The stage of an old town fair. It’s an illumination, built by the famous artisan of Lecce, Apulia, Torquato Parisi. Between antique posters of plays and classic opera, we get closer to a recess that encloses a bookcase: reading the titles on the shelves but sooner or later come to realize that the bookshelf is really a door, that accesses to a secret room

Tommaso Guerra Architect designed the new restaurant and café Rigodon

A speakeasy, a small and intimate space. Here the atmosphere of the foyer transforms, we enter back stage. The walls, are now charcoal grey, and they house ropes and bollards that drop from timber frames hanging from the ceiling. The alcoholic desk is set-up in a shipping crate.

The furniture is metal and wood of a simple and sturdy design. Hanging from the timber frames are old theatre backdrops. Hand painted reproductions of woods, villas and skies, inspired by the set design of a play. And so are the feather costumes eased on the mannequins, waiting to be used in the next change of scene.

Project Rigodon
Area
80 sqm
Location Vicolo di San Giorgio – Rieti
Designer Tommaso Guerra
Photos courtesy Tommaso Guerra
by AN shopfitting magazine no.130 ©