HOUSE

Intro

I have always wanted a piece of Italy to call me own. Preferably in the country. Memories of my paternal grandmother’s marvellous house & garden in a small South Carolinian town. A loft apartment in Genoa did not count. Our Other House. On an excursion to meet a friend in Pontremoli, an historic Medieval town at the foot of the long climb up the Cisa Pass and over into the Northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna, I discovered just where I would look. The Lunigiana. A sort of crossroads marked by the Roman Via Aurelia to Spain and the Via Francigena to all of Northern Italy and Europe beyond. Six years later, my partner and I bought a dilapidated farmhouse in the small village of Codiponte. Il Poggiolo a Codiponte. The local name for our complex of three separate houses… La Casa Grande, L’Appartamento Azzurro and La Casetta… surrounded by what is now a 25,000 sq. ft. terraced garden.

To note: Poggiolo means balcony, poking out as our Italian House does from the village built around the Castle of Codiponte above. Codiponte is dialect for Al Capo del Ponte. Often times, names in Italian are indications, instructions, and warnings too. For travellers passing on the spur of the Via Francigena on pilgrimage to Rome, Codiponte meant there was a toll to pay to cross the only bridge around to continue South to Lucca, and then, Rome. It was Destiny for us. Four years later, we had a comfortable house to call home. Il Poggiolo a Codiponte, in the Lunigiana and my piece of the Italian peninsula.

The House and Garden, each have their own pages, as does the Italian House Blog, fourteen years of posts chronicling the adventure of buying, renovating and making a home in this 800+ year old Tuscan farm-house. Writing the weekly posts… often daily… is how I survived.