Florence | Ub

Located in a little street near San Lorenzo, Ub is what the French would call une adresse incontournable for anyone passing through Florence. In the age of globalization when even tastes seem universal, it’s a real treat to discover a store as original as this, packed with surprises. Vintage furnishings – rehashed or simply displayed according to type in the manner of a proper collection – share shop space with old signs and one-off accessories made by Ratafià, a workshop where they hand-dye and hand-print scarves, aprons, socks and t-shirts.

You could easily spend a whole day at Ub, browsing for the object of your desire: those hand-made, polka-dotted socks in a unique shade…. a tin toy…. a console record player…. And drifting further in, surrounded by objects of every description and provenance, you come across a room that takes your breath away, entirely lined with rolls of vintage wallpaper, legacy of a historic Florentine retailer.

An extraordinary place. This is a guest post contributed by my long-time friend, architect Carla Celestino of Naples and Paris.