House hunting blues...
I had a late evening plate of pasta and white wine with my Dear German Friend. Husband had abandoned her on her hill top abode… a historic former tower turned farm-mansion by a pope’s confessor in the 13th Century… having taken their only car back to Germany for urgent work. Lately and for obvious reasons… must I spell it out? C-O-V-I-D-1-9… automobile travel is the ONLY way to travel these days. Few flights going to the wrong places and any good ones are already booked up. Ditto for trains. Bad enough to be cooped up for two+ hours in an Airbus full of masks, can you imagine what an eight hour train journey would look & be like? As always, the excuse for dinner was the entree for a gab session. House hunting the initial topic. I led the kick-off.
I had concluded a long day in said pursuit with a young German couple spending their free-of-lockdown holiday near Camaiore. He, charming, handsome, full of personality & energy, and is the brother of the wife of my German clients. She, quiet, pretty and I learned early on that when she speaks, better to listen, ie “You should’ve turned left back there”. Oh, well, God gave us navigators to extract us from our mistakes, I suppose. The wife of my German clients had warmly asked if I might escort her brother & girl-friend to see two candidates for a vacation home in Italy. Silly question. Of course. So, early to rise, early to drive down to Camaiore, a vacation enclave turned nearly into a city with the gift of being close to the beaches yet, nestled in the hills far enough away from the madness to be quite a popular place. Arrived at the La Cappella in time to meet and get to know my travelling companions for the day.
We drove to meet the real-estate agent at the first house situated at the end of a borgo way up above Camaiore, enclosed by a rustic stone wall & gate for a compound of grassy terraces and a lovely pink stucco house. All one would have to do with the 3,700 sq. ft. on three floors would be to buy it, take the keys and move right in with your suitcases. All done, four years before, top to bottom, complete with furnishings. Done with simple taste, nothing obnoxious for a re-do. Very hard to find. The house clicks all the boxes of the German clients but two… no direct car access… borgo means village and cars often cannot get through what was lo’ those many years ago a cart path… and no pool. The first can be dealt with. We do at il Poggiolo. You learn logistics fast. The pool could be added but, unfortunately, it would consume a goodly portion of the small exterior space of one of the two grassy terraces.
The second I had scouted and rejected months ago, when I first began to research for houses for sale. Thought the garden, though planted with a lovely Mediterranean variety of plants and trees… lots of olive trees… actually suffocated the terraces and stone house. And, inside the rooms seemed large but, that was because every photo was taken outside the room itself. Gave the impression of space. The pics did not show the many steps… even in the middle of the Salotto!!!… numerous and treacherous staircases hither & yon and the sense of dimensions of the few rooms. All too small in siaze and quantity for my German cleints wishes & needs. All this was the reward of a long and torturous dirt road from civilisation to this hideout on the side of a Tuscan hill. The girl-friend immediately asked about the road when the downpours hit. Good question. I found out from the Mr Renter of the property that the road is a disaster in the rain and must be re-graded every Spring. Oh, well, and I had thought perhaps this house was going to be a winner. We all were glad to leave. For lunch at one of my favourite spots in the whole World to eat outdoors in the Summer… La Baracchetta.
Got a refresher course in Lessons lLearned from House Hunting… stick with your first impressions, however they come and no matter the means. But, the Law of House Hunting came to me as the consequence of the telephone call the brother and I made to the clients in the US, stranded in a COVID-19 limbo. Their circumstances are… the husband has a Green Card, which also covers his family of wife and two small children. He has full rights, they do not. They all may leave the US, go to their home in Germany, even travel to Italy. The problem comes… he may re-enter the US. The wife and kids not. They are in the US until. Most of the conversation was with the wife. A fantastic person, full of intuition, insight AND Good Sense. Fun & charming too. It has been the family’s dream to have a house in Italy, for her ageing father to get him out of far away Spain and as Summer HQ for one and all. We have had the discussion many times of getting no where with house hunting by remote. The fantasy persists. Any prospects of a dream house in Italy were dashed. Not so much by which way we were pointing our thumbs but, by her circumstances. And so, I said this…. There is a house waiting for you here in Italy. It’s looking for you and you will find it when your circumstance allow you to do so. I thought that was one of the wisest statements I have ever uttered from my likes-to-give-lectures mouth. It’s true. Was for You & Me with il Poggiolo. It was true for my Dear German Friend. And will be for my German clients. Now, let’s get rid of this menace of COVID-19, please.
Visit to the Villetta...
Archive post December 22, 2018…
A mistake to have thought the villa would be perfect. Not a lot, but just enough. Turns out, Could be perfect, would have been the proper verb construction. Bad boy. I should never have done that! It compromised discovery and adventure. I must be rusty. Or, deep down I wasn’t much into it. Sometimes dreams are keener than reality. Or, reality kills them off. My subconscious surely had an inkling. I consistently refused to acknowledge the messages. So…
I went, I looked, I left. Done.
Charm and fascination are funny commodities. What appeals generally might not elsewhere. I don’t think you are supposed to crawl & scratch to get to them. Am I spoiled in my old age? Others, like You, for instance, may disagree. By my guest: scratch away.
The interior of the mock-Palladian villa and its older sister’s Fin du Siecle’ wing left me disoriented, distanced, bludgeoned by way too much stuff. No… excuse me… let me put it like this… WAY TOO MUCH STUFF!!! Furniture, books, clothes, pictures, paraphernalia, every pot ‘n pan known to Man…. farm-equipment!!!… cluttered, disordered and dirtied by the dust of neglect. Hey! Where are the house vibes? Stifled. Unreachable. Hidden. No room for its spirit to breathe. Not even a whisper heard of the villa’s abandonment when i nonni passed away in quick succession back in ‘00. I doubt the three heirs have yet to put a foot inside a doorway. Shame on them!
The villa is in three parts. Normally, Oh! Goodie, would be the response here. The oldest part is the wing lent up against… or squeezed in between… a very tall stone wall of the passing street to its left and the cube-like white & cream frescoed villa in prime picture-taking stance on the right.
The former has a big open terrace and window & door cornices bordered in terracotta brick. Easily spotted and enjoyed. A basement of cantine and a garage capped by that big open terrace, a gracious adjunct to its First Floor salotto of an immense length and little width. An 8 x 3 proportion. A modest fireplace inhabits one corner. This is followed by a luxuriously blu-tinted grey tiled 50’s styled bathroom with classic Italian early-chromed fixtures. The Second Floor has three bedrooms. Their bathroom is at the end of the hallway. A quirk of sorts: the staircase communicating between this wing’s floors fills what would have been the fourth Palladian-squared room in the white stucco-ed main villa. The dimensions fit a stairs.
The later part was either re-styled in a severe Deco mood or the terracotta window & doors mouldings were elaborated and summarily stucco-ed over after the Big Quake of ‘22. The Assessment? Tiny rooms. Stuffed to the gills tiny rooms. Four per its two floors. Scaled down Palladio, if there ever was. Overwhelmingly, each tiny room has A MAJOR FIREPLACE!!! Nice motif, baring the later modifications of shrinking them to miniscule… fits tiny… or plugging up entirely their fireboxes. Stepping through the entrance doors, on the left is a kitchen with its MAJOR FIREPLACE!!!, the quirky staircase, and then, on the right a library with more books than you can imagine… skyscrapers of books in front of skyscrapers of books… and its MAJOR FIREPLACE!!! and a salotto with its EVEN BIGGER MAJOR FIREPLACE!!!!! and the ubiquitous clutter and disorder and dust. Up the stairs… risking one’s neck to climb over the farm-equipment with sharp, jabby things… very scary looking prongs… to the three bedrooms and the proverbial… The bathroom’s at the end of the hallway, dear. Ditto clutter and disorder and dust. Cobwebs too.
Behind these two sections and up a treacherous series of stone stairs and through the accompanying jungle is the small Servants Quarters… I suppose. Could not get through the door to find out. An apartment. Once-upon-a-time, servants and/or other could come & go undetected by escaping up another series of dangerous stone stairs to the bridge above. To Freedom!!!
The garden in front of the two houses is a lumpy grassy terrace. BIG LUMPS. Sorry, no badminton or soccer. The Good News is you could land a helicopter on it. The surrounding foliage is quite picturesque. Italian evergreens mixed in with deciduous Italian nature. Cluttered and disorder. Cement and terracotta planters repose underneath the overgrowth in a scenic sort of distribution. Now that IS charming.
No deal. No perfect-ness. Off onto new horizons. We might build.
May I speak of stuff? No doubt about it: SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS!! Just look at what’s on the mantle of the EVEN BIGGER MAJOR FIREPLACE!!! Merely a hint of what could not be adequately photographed. Peccato. The house may not have moved me, but the stuff surely did. I may go back with You and rummage for some gems. A woven cane seated bent walnut three-seater sofa. I know he’d be up for that or, he wouldn’t be You.