THE HOUSE

The house is on two floors.The ground floor comprises a large sitting-dining room with open fireplace and French windows giving onto the garden, a cosy television room with large English language video library, the kitchen and owner’s private quarters. Outside there is a large shady portico under the first floor terrace where, weather permitting, breakfast can be served in the shade.

The extensive unfenced garden has terraced flower beds, softened by aromatic herbs and blue iris, and gives onto the neighbouring olive grove and cultivated fields.

The décor is in keeping with the house. Furniture dating back to the seventeen and eighteen hundreds is integrated with contemporary design resulting in an overall feeling of relaxed elegance. Ornaments collected around the world give the Casa del Tesoro an eclectic atmosphere.

The flooring throughout the property is of bricks baked in the kilns at Pirano di Sotto, just a kilometre away, in the late 1700s. The walls, some up to two feet thick, are of brick with an internal cavity filled with local sandstone rocks, which eliminate the necessity for air conditioning in the heat of the summer. The roof beams are of oak and support many of the original terracotta tiles.

Internet access is available.

HISTORY

CASA del TESORO was originally built in 1740, a long narrow farmhouse with stables and a sheep-pen on the ground floor and an external staircase leading to the living quarters above. In 1800 the kitchen, internal staircase and an additional bedroom were added on one side and an external bread oven and lean-to chicken coop on the other. In the 1850s the construction of a new barn on the east side meant that the animals could to be moved out of the main building and, with the addition of a chimney-piece in the stable, the house was given over solely to human inhabitation.

The property’s proximity to the regional boundary with Emilia-Romagna, just four hundred yards away on two sides, made the house an ideal lookout, as a tiny window beneath the roof bares witness. Here throughout the night a watchman would lie with a rifle permanently trained towards the small bridge over the river Tavolo to the west, the small tributary to the north is still known as Rio dei Nemici (Enemies’ Brook).

As the earliest extant property in the Valle del Picchio (Woodpecker Valley), Casa del Tesoro is protected by the Belli Arti, the Italian heritage organization, and the complete restoration of the house in the late 1990s and first years of the 21st century respects the original construction, indeed only the addition of the wrought iron balustrade on the first floor terrace belies any visual change to the exterior since the early 1800’s.