Tour Odéon - where various members of the Marzocco family live - has become their calling card, a global benchmark for ultra-prime luxury living, ever since its 3,300sq m penthouse went on sale several years ago for a reported €388 million and smashed world records. Today, Groupe Marzocco - founded by Domenico, and now run by Claudio, his brother Luca, and Claudio's sons and nephew - is one of Monaco's leading developers, with 50 major projects under its belt since the early 1980s. My best friend was Alexandre Giraldi,' explains 45-year-old Daniele, remembering his old classmate, who has gone on to become the most famous Monégasque architect. I was 11 and didn't speak a word of French, but I integrated quickly. 'Many of us moved here at the same time - my family, my uncle and his family.
The kidnapping convinced Claudio, however, that the moment had come to make the move.
'My grandfather, Domenico, was already living in Monaco and working as a property developer, and he had been trying to persuade my father to join him for a long time, but my father thought Monaco was too small,' says Daniele. Traumatised and fearing for the safety of his wife, Doriana, and their two young sons, Daniele and Niccolò, within a month he had moved the family to Monaco, 25 miles away from their home in Sanremo on the Italian Riviera. His father, Claudio - only 29 at the time, in 1988 - had miraculously escaped being held hostage for two weeks by an Italian mafia gang. As a procession of Italian dishes arrives at his table at the Odéon Café by Cipriani, the restaurant in Monaco's tallest building, the Tour Odéon, Daniele Marzocco is recalling the extraordinary events that led his family to flee to the pint-sized Principality when he was a child.