Paris? C'est magnifique!: At home with Gabriella Cortese

Living in Paris, you feel free; there are none of the constraints of living in a small town. My family and I have a four-bedroom house on Avenue Frochot, near Pigalle, which is just a street down from Montmartre. It has to be the best part of the city to live when you're raising a child. There are many parks and gardens, not to mention the restaurants and shops.

Every Saturday, I go to the local organic market to buy food for the family, and then to the boulangerie for fresh bread. There are bikes you can borrow all over the city, so I only use my Smart car for commuting to and from the office. On the weekend my son, Nicola, and I cycle around the centre of town, watching all the people sitting outside the cafés. In the winter, Parisians get very moody, which is a little tiresome, but as soon as the sun comes out, everyone smiles and there's an amazing atmosphere.

Being where we are, we're so close to the hustle and bustle of it all, yet we're also in our own little world. Our home is on a beautiful, gated street, where all the neighbours know each other. It feels like you're living in the middle of the countryside. In the daytime, Nicola plays outside in the front garden, where I try to teach him the different smells and names of the herbs we grow, from mint to rosemary.

Originally, I come from Turin, a small town in the north of Italy, as does my friend (and the wife of Nicolas Sarkozy), Carla Bruni. It's known as the Small Paris, which might explain why we have both ended up living here. I've been in Paris 20 years now, and it's very different to Turin in many ways, such as the scale of everything here and the sense of freedom you have in the city, but there are similarities, too. The baroque architecture, the greenery: small things remind me of growing up in the countryside.

Our street is very calm, there's no access for cars and most of our neighbours are other families and young couples. It means we don't have the constant fear that can come with living in a big city, which makes this place very special.

My husband and I immediately fell in love with the house when we found it, just one year ago. Although, it has taken until now to get it into shape. When we first arrived, it seemed no one had made any repairs since it was built in the early 1900s. There was so much to do and to organise that my husband left me to it, though I'd always ask him, "What do you think?" – once the job was done. The most important thing was making a home for our family, somewhere that we could live without constantly worrying about breaking things or making a mess. It's very much like an English country house in many ways, with a big fireplace and rustic features.

Inside, the style feels similar to the house I grew up in. My grandmother was Hungarian, so we had all sorts of different influences going on, with bits and pieces from different periods scattered everywhere. You have that same sense here. Walking into my house is a bit like passing through different stages of time. There was no set "look" we had in mind, but I knew we had to create somewhere that had a sense of history. I need my house to feel like a home; ultimately it's a collection of my past and my present, and that of my husband.

We have three floors. The lower floor is very much the family area, and then my son has his own section and we have ours. Our floor is basically an apartment in itself, with a large master bedroom. On the wall hangs a beautiful Art Deco Nisha Crossland tapestry depicting Japanese flowers. It's neither masculine nor feminine, which is important in a shared space.

I love mirrors, particularly Venetian ones, and have an original 1940s piece on my bedside table. My friend, the interior designer Michaela Curetti, created the nut-coloured leather bed-head especially for this room. We maximise space by storing all our clothes separately in the next room, hidden behind floor-to-ceiling mirrors. This room leads to our en-suite bathroom, where we installed a fabulous free-standing bath.

One of the best features in the house is a bespoke, black-and-gold Tom Dixon light feature, which runs through the middle of a spiralling wooden staircase. It releases a stunning cascade of colours. Another favourite piece is the hand-painted silk tapestry in the main hallway, depicting a Japanese bamboo forest.

Of course, we want our house to look lovely, but it isn't a gallery – it must also be practical. We laid wooden floors throughout so we don't have to wear shoes, and the kitchen, from the Italian brand Boffi, has sleek black marble surfaces, meaning you don't have to worry about chopping boards or stains. It's taken an entire year to get this house just right; I've even managed to plant some tomatoes and lettuce in the garden! Now that it's complete, I can safely say there's no chance of us moving from here in a hurry. After all this building work, I don't ever want to see anybody fixing anything again!

Gabriella Cortese, 43, is the founder of Antik Batik, a label whose fans include Kate Moss and Gwen Stefani. Cortese lives with her husband, the actor Marc Rioufol, and their 18 month-old son, Nicola, on Avenue Frochot in Paris, where Jean-Paul Gaultier and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec have both lived.