Fenoglio was thirty-seven when he built the house as his own residence. He had already designed over a hundred Turin villas and palazzi, and would design over three hundred more by his death in 1927 — but Casa Fenoglio-Lafleur is the one he kept signing. The wrought-iron balcony, the polychrome floral panels, the curved bay window: each is the Fenoglio signature in compressed form. The double name comes from the building’s two most significant occupants: the architect who designed it, and the French entrepreneur Lafleur who purchased it from him shortly after 1902 and lived there until his death.

The building sits in Cit Turin, the bourgeois district that Liberty colonised in the years either side of 1900. The walk from Porta Susa west along Corso Francia and the parallel streets is the canonical Italian Liberty walk: dozens of named buildings, almost all still inhabited, almost none ticketed.

Casa Fenoglio-Lafleur is a private residence and is not open to the public. The exterior can be viewed from the pavement on both Corso Francia and Via Principi d’Acaja; the corner is best appreciated from the south-west, where the curved bay catches morning light.