Flowery, Glassy and a Little Crazy – the Ornamented Staircase in the Palazzo Castelmur

Everybody is slightly crazy, is written on the walls of a house in the Val Bregaglia. This somewhat rings true when it comes to the people of the Val Bregaglia – in the best way possible. A crazy idea was, for instance, when the Bregaglia-born artist Augusto Giacometti’s decided to paint a "fantasy over a potato blossom". With this oil painting dating from 1917, Giacometti transcended the boundaries of the figurative – in a fantastically beautiful way. There is almost a cosmic quality to the potato blossom.

The idea that Giovanni de Castelmur had around 1852 seems even crazier. The nobleman from the Val Bregaglia, who had become wealthy as a confectioner in France, had a large castle built near Stampa in the Lombard-Venetian style. The handrails of the staircase in the castle's interior were to be decorated with balls made of Cristallo glass that the baron had purchased in Paris. And these balls – literally – reveal hidden depths to this day.

Thousands of flowers or blossoms seem to be visible in the large ball that adorns the marble column at the bottom of the stairs. And, indeed, the ball was made using a technique known as "millefiori", which means a thousand flowers. The colourful, artfully fused glass was crafted by the renowned "Compagnie des Cristalleries de Saint-Louis" in the Vosges. The ball can still be admired today. And who knows what other crazy discoveries might be made between the flowers…