Meet the Artisan: Licciardello Gioielli

If you’re looking for a truly unique and beautiful souvenir from your trip to Rome, you can’t go wrong with jewelry. And one of our favorite places to buy jewelry is Licciardello Gioielli, a small family-run shop in Monti. Here, master goldsmith Massimo Licciardello and his wife Cristina make jewelry collections inspired by Rome, repair and design bespoke pieces for clients, and offer a selection of jewelry by other designers with a similar ethos.

Entering off Via dei Serpenti, you’re welcomed into an intimate space full of beautiful objects and stories. Up front, an old workbench has been repurposed as a table where Massimo displays items and glass cases are filled with shiny necklaces, earrings, bracelets, and rings. But the real magic happens in the back of the shop, where Massimo’s workshop is equipped with all the tools of the trade, some of which are a hundred years old. There, he melts gold down, transforms wires into delicate chains, and uses the lost wax method to cast pieces like the Colosseum ring he first created for our co-founder Elizabeth Minchilli and has since become known for.

“My father started the business in the 1970s, in this neighborhood,” Massimo explains. “And then, after finishing my studies, I decided to continue this wonderful job because ever since middle school I spent my afternoons in the workshop playing with the goldsmith’s tools. So as an adult, the most logical choice was to continue this activity, because I still enjoy it.”

A black-and-white photograph of his father as a young man with a couple of other guys sitting around a goldsmith’s table hangs on the wall. Nearby, a frame displays a poem that Massimo wrote in the Roman dialect in his spare time. Up front, a couple of framed certificates from La Sapienza University attest to Massimo’s brief stint as professor teaching a course about the form and culture of jewelry.

“The machinery is old, ancient even, but its use has remained unchanged. We produce an object using the same techniques as a thousand years ago. The difference is electricity,” Massimo notes. “In my work, I have not yet introduced the use of computers, so we work by hand.”

As Massimo tells it, he’s not a skilled artist, but he learned to draw by necessity. When starting a new project, he begins by sketching out a design. Some of his most beautiful pieces are inspired by Roman monuments. His Fiori Imperiali (Imperial Flowers) collection, for example, was inspired by the flowers engraved on monuments and is a play on words with Fori Imperiali (the Imperial Forums just a few blocks away from the shop). It took him a year to perfect the design of the Frammenti collection, which was inspired by the frieze on the north wall of the Ara Pacis. 

“And then we have things with precious stones, and since stones are another passion of mine, let’s just say that unfortunately when I find an exceptional stone, I can’t resist buying it,” he says with a smile. He works with suppliers who import emeralds from Zambia, tourmalines from Colombia, and other precious and semi-precious stones from around the world. 

“We also have many customers who come to Italy from the United States with a bag of jewelry to be repaired, modified, or restored. It is a great honor for us because we have become trusted jewelers for many Americans,” Massimo says. For Massimo and Cristina, though, the shop is first and foremost a point of reference for the local community.

“We are the neighborhood store. There’s a connection between us and the Monti neighborhood,” Massimo says. “Since the 1970s, we’ve been the neighborhood’s go-to place, both as a jewelry store and as a place to say ‘hello, how are you?’”

The shop is open on Monday afternoons from 4 – 7 pm and from Tuesday through Saturday from 10 am – 7 pm, but if you have a specific project in mind, it’s best to make an appointment. If you stop by, be sure to tell Massimo we sent you.

Licciardello Gioielli

Via dei Serpenti 5, 00184 Roma
+39 06 4881002
info@licciardellogioielli.it