About Palazzo Cielo
Twenty-six years ago, Matthew and I opened a small home store in Portland, Oregon — and called it Cielo Home & Garden. It was inspired by our travels through Europe, and a conviction that the objects we live with should feel gathered, not manufactured.
Today, many years after we first opened that beloved shop, Palazzo Cielo now lives inside Cargo Emporium in Portland. The name has changed, and so has some of what you'll find inside. But the way we choose things, one piece at a time, hasn't. Where we once carried furnishings as the centerpiece, we've leaned more fully into one of our earliest loves: apothecary and fragrance, gifts and curiosities, European delicacies, candies and chocolates, and the small extraordinary things that bring pleasure to both a home and the people who live in it.
That more complete offering of furniture, antiques, lighting, and accessories now lives under the wing of Cielo Home Interior Design, which has grown into its own address: a dedicated design studio and showroom with a curated collection of high end, bespoke furniture, antiques, and accessories, for clients ready to furnish a home, or simply feather their nest, in full.
Along the way, sourcing trips turned into something like a second education. Paris, twice a year, for Déco Off. Milan, for Salone del Mobile. Visits to the Trudon boutique, and afternoons finding small, exacting houses like Maison Matine before most American shops knew the name.
And then there is Piozzo.
In the hills of Piedmont, near the town of Barolo, between Turin and Genoa, sits a palazzo that has been part of our life for many years. It was built in the 1640s by a family of chemists who ran an apothecary from its rooms, mixing tinctures and remedies in a house that still stands. On this site, you'll find a photograph from the 19th century showing the original farmacia signage still mounted above the door. What we found there felt like it had been waiting for us: fragrance, ritual, the slow accumulation of beautiful things, all of it alive in that house three hundred years before we arrived.
Il cielo in terra. Heaven on earth. The phrase was carved into the palazzo's deed long before we adopted it as our own. It felt like the right way to describe a shop built on the same idea: that the things around us, chosen with care, are their own kind of grace.
Palazzo Cielo is a home and gift shop, an apothecary of sorts, and a small tribute to a much older one. Cielo Home Interior Design continues alongside us, now devoted entirely to the art of design.
Whether you visit us in Portland or have us ship it to you anywhere in the world, we hope what you find here earns a place in your hearts and homes.
With love,
Matthew and Frederic
