Sotirio Bulgari: The Greek Silversmith Who Built Rome's Most Famous Jewellery House

Sotirio Bulgari: The Greek Silversmith Who Built Rome's Most Famous Jewellery House

Introduction: From the Mountains of Epirus to the Spanish Steps

Sotirios Voulgaris was born on March 18, 1857, in Paramythia, a small town in the Pindus mountains of what was then the Ottoman Empire. His family came from Kalarrytes, a village that was the largest centre for silversmithing in the Balkans. The craft had been passed from father to son since the Byzantine era, and Sotirios learned it the same way, first making belts and earrings, then sword cases and silver buttons, travelling with his father through Epirus and into what is now Albania to sell their work.

He was one of eleven children. He was the only one who survived.

In 1877, at age twenty, he left. Corfu first, where he opened a workshop with his father. Then Naples, where burglaries forced them to close. Then Rome in 1881, where he found a Greek sponge merchant willing to share a shop on the Via Sistina. Sotirio displayed his silver pieces among the sponges, an immigrant selling craftsmanship to tourists who passed through the Eternal City on the Grand Tour.

In 1884 he opened his own shop at Via Sistina 85. His first clients were English aristocrats, wealthy young men completing the traditional European education expected of their class. They bought his pieces as souvenirs and carried the name back to London, spreading the reputation of this Greek silversmith who worked in a style that blended Byzantine and Islamic influences with floral motifs.

The Move to Condotti and the Birth of a Dynasty

In 1905, Sotirio moved to Via dei Condotti 10, near the Spanish Steps, with his two sons Costantino and Giorgio. That address is still the Bulgari flagship today, one of the few luxury boutiques in the world that has remained in the same location for over a century.