La Pesa di Sopra
Our next stop in Italy was Tuscany. Next newsletter I'll go through our itinerary and share wine tasting and travel stories, but this week I want to spotlight the property we stayed in.
We stayed at a crazy rental that my dad booked for the family, it was a 15th-century farmhouse restored into a luxury villa.
Dating back to the 15th century, the bottom levels were originally a stable for horses and pigs, then later they added living quarters up above creating a second level, and then kept extending it over the following centuries.
This was not the kind of spot where you wanted to forget your phone downstairs, as it was hard to navigate in the dark or after a few glasses of wine. The house was extended piecemeal over the centuries, so the floor levels don’t line up and some staircases run off in several directions.
As confusing as it was, I sort of loved thinking about the way this structure came to be. Like nobody sat down and planned this house. Instead people continued to build upon and redesign it so it grew out of function.
The villa sits in the Chianti region, and had a crazy wine cellar stocked with some of the high-end wines of the area. The cellar is carved straight into the bedrock and is original to the house. Its the oldest part of the place, 500 years of people have kept wine down there.
One night we had a cooking class at the house, run by a local chef named Nando. We learned some historic ways of making fresh pasta. Growing up Italian, I already know how to make homemade pasta, but I’d never used a chitarra (”guitar”). This was a traditional wooden frame strung with wire, where you press a sheet of dough through to cut it into strands.
On the second floor was the formal dining room, with the home’s original fireplace at the center of the living quarters. This room felt so fancy it was like a medieval castle or something out of a movie.
The gardens were as awesome as the house. Fresh herbs planted everywhere and the tall Italian cypress trees. Plus the pool was so sweet and looked out at the mountains.
So that was the house! Worth its own newsletter. I left grateful and full of 15th-century design inspiration, and more convinced than ever that you can't replicate the human touch. The best things come from human creativity and the patina of time.
Ciao !
