<img decoding="async" class="size-full-width wp-image-1571338" src="https://observer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/08/DSCF8297.jpg?quality=80&w=970" alt="A wide view of the Alessandra di Castro gallery interior, showcasing a central bronze statue surrounded by classical paintings, framed artworks, and glass cases with decorative objects, set against deep red walls.” width=”970″ height=”715″ data-caption=’Alessandra Di Castro comes from a family of Roman antique dealers active since 1878, and her historic shop overlooks Rome’s Piazza di Spagna. <span class=”media-credit”>LEO BASTREGHI</span>’>
When most people think of antique dealers, they picture a dim, dusty bottega crowded with memorabilia and curios—or perhaps a Sunday flea market where hidden treasures await. But the trade has shifted. Today, it covers a broader range of objects and operates under far stricter business standards and legal frameworks, with due diligence now central to how items are sourced, vetted and sold.
With the Biennale dell’Antiquariato in Florence—one of the world’s most prestigious showcases of museum-quality antiques, fine art and historic objects—on now, 2025, we spoke with Alessandra Di Castro, a fourth-generation dealer from a storied Roman family based in Piazza di Spagna.
According to Di Castro, Italian antiquarian practices underwent a profound transformation in the 1960s, becoming more scientific, methodical and academically rigorous. She carries on her family’s legacy through her gallery in Rome and embodies that shift. Where connoisseurship was once rooted in instinct and tradition, today’s antiquarian emphasizes scholarship, documentation and cultural responsibility. “There’s a strong emphasis today on knowledge creation,” she tells Observer.
Her grandfather focused primarily on furnishings, catering to an Italian clientele of professionals—doctors and lawyers—who were outfitting their homes. “Back in the 1950s and 60s, furniture was something of a status symbol,” says Di Castro, who began working alongside her father at a young age, and by then, he had already expanded the gallery’s focus toward paintings—an area that had not been her grandfather’s domain.
In shaping that new direction, her father collaborated with leading scholars such as Giuliano Briganti and Federico Zeri, along with a trusted restorer from Capodimonte, Antonio De Mata. His eye for quality was backed by connoisseurship—his ability to attribute works to the right masters. “My father was not a specialist in all fields, and neither am I. Naturally, he relied on the expertise of great scholars,” she says. “We were dealing with works ranging from the Renaissance and gold-ground paintings to early Neoclassicism—a vast and complex field. For decorative arts, he worked with Alvar González-Palacios. These were truly top-tier collaborations at the time.”
Through those partnerships, the Di Castro family built a reputation for expertise and taste. When Alessandra Di Castro opened her own space in 2009, she further broadened the gallery’s scope by introducing 20th-century art and design. “My grandfather dealt in furniture, my father in paintings and I mostly deal in objets d’art. We’ve always evolved with the times.”
What has remained constant throughout was a sense of cultural responsibility. “I think one defining aspect of Italian antiquarian tradition, which ties me to my roots, is the effort to bring many artworks back to Italy,” she reflects. “Today, Italian antiques dealers have evolved into more mature professionals; they are more aware of the public responsibility that comes with every transaction. We play a new crucial role—not just as a broker between artwork and buyer, but as a guarantor of legality, an active player in protecting cultural heritage and preventing illicit trafficking.”
Another defining trait of Di Castro’s generation was the opportunity to pursue a formal education—something earlier generations of dealers often lacked. “Earlier generations were extraordinary connoisseurs, and I’m not saying they lacked scientific rigor, but I developed a greater technical awareness and precision of language through my university studies,” she says, recalling how her father often took her along when buying or visiting museums. Their home regularly hosted international dealers and scholars.
After earning her degree at La Sapienza in Rome, Di Castro continued her studies in Decorative Arts at the Study Center at the Victoria and Albert Museum, when many of these disciplines remained underexplored in Italy—and, she says, still are. There, she engaged with forms of art she might not have otherwise encountered. There she studied under Rosalba Zuccaro, a professor who taught miniature painting and small-scale arts but also devoted entire courses to 20th-century ceramics, deepening Di Castro’s knowledge of what was then a niche field and today is increasingly in demand. “At the time, I didn’t understand why—I hadn’t encountered those subjects in my upbringing—but I attended her classes diligently and these lessons opened up fascinating new worlds to me.”
“Today, I find myself well-versed in artists like Galileo Chini and Duilio Cambellotti—extraordinary figures who are still under-recognized. There’s a lot of work to do,” she says, pointing to the contrast with someone like William De Morgan, who was just honored with a retrospective at the V&A. “Today these artists are better known and widely studied, but when I was at university in the 1980s, this was all still undervalued—economically, it still is.”
Although connoisseurship remains central to her practice, she faced a national and international market that looked nothing like the one her father and grandfather knew when she opened her own gallery. Chief among the changes was the growing importance of participating in fairs. For Di Castro, these are not just commercial opportunities to meet new clients, but also critical moments to share and advance the research and scholarship developed through the gallery’s programming. “It always pays off—because even the ones in Italy are packed and people are dying to get in. There’s a deep, widespread passion for collecting in Italy—in every form imaginable, from stamps to coins to design.”
Still, as president of the Apollo Project and executive member of the TEFAF committee, she is acutely aware of the bureaucratic hurdles Italian dealers face—obstacles that don’t burden their peers abroad. “The main gap between Italy and other European countries lies in the notification system and our lengthy bureaucracy for export permissions,” she explains. “In Europe, value thresholds for notification are much higher. In France, thresholds are double the European standard. For paintings, the E.U. threshold is €150,000. In Italy, it’s just €13,200, after which an export declaration is required.” In France and the U.K., she points out, if a work is notified, the state must purchase it—forcing institutions to focus only on works deemed vital to national heritage.
“These protective measures could be streamlined through digitization. Much of the red tape could be eliminated,” she notes. Even so, Di Castro remains optimistic, pointing to a shift in tone at the institutional level. For instance, Italy still lacks an accessible database of artworks under export restrictions—something she believes is essential for professionals to operate with legal certainty. “Generations pass, and some owners may no longer know that an artwork has been restricted.”
The implementation of Regulation EU 2019/880 in June is expected to add another layer of bureaucracy. “I haven’t found it obstructive yet, mostly because we’re confronting it for the first time,” she says. “But bureaucracy is heavy—more red tape means more logistical burden and higher compliance costs.” Even so, she sees reasons for optimism. Italy’s reduction of VAT on art sales—from 22 percent to 5 percent, the lowest in Europe—earlier this year is, in her view, a historic milestone. Her hope is that it will help revive the domestic market.
As president of Gruppo Apollo, which advocated for the tax change, Di Castro played a key role in drafting a position paper outlining the sector’s shared concerns. The group brings together a wide range of stakeholders—auction houses, modern and contemporary galleries, logistics firms, the Associazione Antiquari d’Italia, FIMA (the Italian Federation of Art Dealers) and numismatists—giving the trade a collective voice in policymaking. “We’ve tried to articulate the steps that could help close the gap with other European countries—without compromising our commitment to preservation, which remains absolute,” she says. “All of us in the trade are trained and aligned on this principle.”
Despite the challenges, Di Castro has no intention of leaving Rome. “Rome isn’t just museums and public galleries; it’s fountains, palaces, churches and streets,” she notes. “When people enter and see these vivid, unusual, sometimes eccentric materials, they’re also seeing what has shaped my taste—a taste rooted in the Castro tradition passed down from my father and grandfather, but refined through my own choices.”
Her inaugural exhibition set the tone for how she wanted to ground her program in the city’s deep historical and artistic context. Focused on intaglios and cameos, the show was accompanied by a modest catalog featuring a map identifying the historic engraving and cameo workshops once clustered around Piazza di Spagna—names like Giuseppe Girometti, the Pichler brothers, Benedetto Pistrucci and the Saolini dynasty. These artisans, along with the Valadiers and other master marble and gemstone workshops, all operated nearby. The idea for the catalog came from a hunch, she recalls. “I wasn’t fully aware of how meaningful it would be, but it turned out to be formative. It gave shape to my entire programming: putting objects in context.”
That context, she explains, is what clients—both institutional and private—respond to most. The story of a piece drives the sale. “You need to find that unique, curious, eccentric piece, and then you have to tell its story,” she says. “And when you tell those stories surrounded by landmarks like the Spanish Steps, Bernini’s Barcaccia fountain, or Valadier’s Piazza del Popolo, the whole experience becomes tangible. People walking into my gallery understand that there’s a whole world behind what they see.”
Given how central storytelling is to her practice, Di Castro has embraced new channels to reach broader and more diverse audiences—including social media. Short videos focused on a single object, where she narrates its story, have proven especially effective—not only for attracting new clients, but also for advancing her broader mission of cultivating appreciation and generating knowledge around these works.
Equally important, these platforms reach people who may not come from a collecting background. “They can sense that there’s a story behind every object,” she notes, which is part of why she believes so strongly in the power of having a physical gallery. “I love welcoming even curious passersby, those attracted by something in the window.”
This openness is essential for younger buyers, many of whom first encounter Di Castro at fairs—settings that feel far less intimidating than the prospect of ringing a gallery doorbell. “At a fair, they feel more comfortable talking to me or my daughter, who’s 30 and speaks their language. Maybe they start by buying a drawing—not a huge investment—and gradually build a small collection.” For her, the gallery plays another role: fostering a new generation of collectors. “You can offer them high-level drawings or other pieces, without demanding large sums of money.”
She is equally convinced that antique objects can align with 21st-century aesthetics. “Just because something is old doesn’t mean it isn’t modern. The other challenge is helping young collectors find antique works that meet their visual expectations.”
Today, Di Castro’s clientele is diverse and not necessarily international—or at least not entirely based abroad. “There’s a passionate, curious Italian clientele that attends fairs and visits galleries,” she says. “There’s a growing younger clientele that doesn’t get much attention.”
Another significant segment includes the many foreigners now purchasing homes in Italy, often encouraged by the country’s flat tax framework. “They furnish them with Italian taste and aesthetics—those are very interesting clients. And now, buying in Italy is even more advantageous.”
Public museums also buy more consistently, including Italian institutions—though this rarely makes headlines. “It’s not widely reported—perhaps because we lack proper monitoring—but I can assure you that Italian museums are buying, and they’re buying well to enrich their collections. That’s another important but overlooked development.”
With the professionalization of the field, the relationship between antique dealers and cultural institutions has evolved significantly. “My father had important institutional relationships and was a cultured, sophisticated man. I inherited many of those ties. But I came of age during a period of suspicion and distance between institutions and dealers,” she recounts. “Over time, that relationship has evolved into one of collaboration and mutual trust. Today, we work closely with museums, which also buy from dealers.”
Institutions increasingly view antique dealers as qualified partners, contributing to research, preservation and the appreciation of national heritage. “These are no longer occasional, episodic relationships like in my father’s time. They’re now structured collaborations,” Di Castro explains. Dealers are actively involved in exhibition loans and often serve as intermediaries, knowing where private collectors hold unpublished works that could enrich a show or catalog. These partnerships can extend to co-publishing and research, deepening connoisseurship around specific periods or objects.
And it’s not just museums—archives, heritage offices and universities are also turning to dealers. This year, Di Castro is teaching in the Decorative Arts master’s program at Roma Tre University. “Antique dealers are now fully recognized for their connoisseurship and are even invited to teach,” she says. “That’s because museum professionals need to understand our world and market to make informed decisions.”
For Di Castro, dealing in antiques must always carry a cultural mission. “Before anything else, the role of the antiquarian is to create culture. That’s our real work,” she says—a fitting conclusion to our conversation.
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