When I heard about your departure I tried to write to you, trivially on your Facebook wall. I couldn't find the words, but the song Blue in Green by Miles Davis came to mind. Here, the sound of his trumpet after the chords on Bill Evans' piano expresses exactly what I felt and feel. Glad to have talked to you about music and to have seen you take back the sax after so long.

Goodbye Franco, say hello to John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk. And behave yourselves.

Salvatore Peluso

Dear Franco,

to find you back, I went through the history of the What's App messages we exchanged over time. At first just a few, because you were certainly not the type who imposed his presence, then almost daily in the three years in which I had the luck and the privilege to be your colleague, and again less frequent but always full of affection when we were no longer colleagues, but only friends.
A message, the most trivial and frequent one – almost every morning between 8.00 and 8.20 – "Are you coming for coffee?" is for me also the most painful to read today, witnessing a daily routine made up of an empty editorial office, lights still off and your presence that was announced by whistling first, then your perfume.
Coffee, cigarettes and confidences: mine as a frightened little girl struggling with the first problems in the working world, with the search for a house, the stupid issues with boyfriends that at the time seemed to be national dramas; yours as an apprehensive father with a daughter a little younger than me who was approaching adulthood, as a practical man struggling with a house to be built and as a dreamer who identified himself in a film or fell in love with a documentary.
With that morning coffee we got to know each other, to build a special friendship.
Since then I have changed colleagues and jobs, but I have never had that date with anyone again. It will remain my memory, banal, of a special person.

Goodbye Franco.

Carlotta Marelli

Hi, Franco,

You had brought this beautiful and good pastiera to us in the editorial office, proud because it had been made by the very good hands of Martina, your daughter.  You were always smiling, a reference in perfect balance between Yin and Yang in the work environment. You leave a great void wherever you've been, of that I am more than certain. In my experience in working at Domus you remain one of the most beautiful memories.

Olga Mascolo

Pres' Blues in F minor (Impromptu)

May you always find an aerophone / to blow your kindness in / and that pork pie hat / you were always looking for

Raffaele Vertaldi

I remember meeting you in October 2018. I had transplanted myself to Milan from London with barely a word of Italian to write for Domus’ website. You were a graphic designer on the print edition of the magazine, spoke little English, and sat at the very opposite end of the office. There was plenty to excuse a friendship from the get-go. But that wasn’t you – you were kind and welcoming, and dressed in a pair of Dr. Martens and parka, a strange reminder of home abroad.
There was always space for an extra tray at your lunch table, where I came to appreciate your wicked sense of humour and love of saxophone, translated through the medium of much put-upon colleagues. You were wry – offering words not exactly of encouragement on one especially inauthentic risotto I had prepared – and irreverent, judging from the jokes that sometimes weren’t translated.
Your jest extended to your commitment to broadening my Italian vocabulary beyond the confines of rudimentary architectural terminology, to include the correct pronunciation of important words such as “platypus” and the “little key” from which coffee was offered regularly.
These anecdotes are of small but so welcomed gestures, little shoots in comparison to the deep roots of friendship you grew at Domus. As such, I know how acutely your absence will be felt in the magazine’s newsroom, and on its pages. 

Abracci,
Jessica x

Jessica Mairs

Hi Franco,

There are no right words for this moment. We who have spent days, lunches, coffees, talking together. You have always amazed us with your kindness towards us, a man for whom respect, listening and friendship are absolute values. Shall we remember the comments about the juicy lunches in the cafeteria?
Our days in Domus were a continuous meeting, between offered coffees, musical suggestions and unconditional affection.
And now we are here to rethink your whistle, to imprint it in our memories.

Thank you.

The guys from the archive, Elena Claudia Oscar

During the breaks from the editorial routine, you and I, Franco, mostly talked about animals. Short incursions into a world that included your dog and Marianna's, my cat and Simona's, but also a coypu that had crossed the street in the morning and the crows that guarded the courtyard of Domus. You did not hesitate to express your tenderness, your feelings and sometimes fragility, you who were so discreet. I've always liked this aspect of you. That affection, that curiosity and sympathy without judgment, I had the impression that you felt it for us, your colleagues. Today I would like to ask you if I was right - I think yes.

Annalisa Rosso