GIANLUCA VITELLI

Founder, London

Gianluca founded Palterna in 2014 with a singular vision: to grant discerning collectors, family offices, and museums seamless, privileged access to the world’s most extraordinary and rarest assets. His team operates at the intersection of art, investment, and heritage, curating museum-quality collections across an exceptionally broad spectrum—from Old Master paintings, sculptures, and antiquities to investment-grade fancy-colour diamonds, high jewellery, classic and hypercars, independent Swiss watchmaking, fine wines, rare spirits, precious metals, and even yachts, jets, helicopters, and memorabilia.

The firm's true differentiator is its meticulously cultivated, multi-generational global network. Rather than operating through intermediaries, Gianluca connects clients directly to the owners of the world's leading galleries, high-jewellery maisons, and specialist dealers—many of whom possess 40 to 60 years of niche expertise and have supplied works to over 100 international museums, often across multiple generations of art-dealing families. In diamonds and gemstones, his relationships extend to primary distributors from legendary mines like Argyle and Cullinan, who supply polished stones to the world's foremost jewellery houses and luxury brands across the Far East, Europe, and the Americas.

Within the automotive realm, he collaborates closely with European hypercar manufacturers producing ultra-limited high-performance machines, as well as specialist dealers in classic cars, race cars, and F1 heritage. Meanwhile, his watch division works hand-in-hand with leading Swiss and German brands and AHCI independent watchmakers, artisans who produce fewer than a few hundred timepieces in total each year, often creating unique, bespoke commissions for collectors in the Middle East and the US, as well as exclusive pieces for private watch clubs worldwide.

EDUCATION AND EARLY CAREER

An alumnus of Highgate School and University College London (Economics & Management, with a year spent in Milan), Gianluca began his career trading precious metals at Baird & Co, the UK's largest and only gold refinery, before managing private wealth for prominent GCC families in Qatar and Saudi Arabia. This rare combination of financial rigour, investment-banking discipline, and deep specialist relationships allows him to deliver a truly personalised service, one that ensures not only the best pricing and access to never-before-seen bespoke pieces, but also complete confidence, trust, and a personalised experience that few will ever encounter. Whether building a collection from the ground up or enhancing an established legacy, Gianluca and his team provide the expertise, discretion, and global reach to turn the rarest ambitions into reality.

Since 2014, Gianluca has partnered with the right art and luxury experts in their chosen field and trusted, well-connected business agents in key markets around the world, who understand how to manage and build long lasting client relationships. He carefully builds the right teams, aligns their efforts around a clear shared goal, and always puts clients first to help them confidently acquire what they love and can be proud to own and discreetly divest or what they no longer wish to keep in their collections.