In Armenzano, village of Assisi, located in the uncontaminated scenery of the Subasio, there are me, my family, my farmhouse and B&B. We inherited and brought up this small estate in scenery of Franciscan memory, in contact with nature that so much inspired St. Francis’s life.
My mother and her ancestors have always lived here and I do not deny to be very attached to this place. Then, my “work” made it, to my eyes, even more beautiful. Here, in fact, I met lovely people who came as tourists and returned home as “friends.”
Managing a tourist structure in the country is hard, there is always something to do; when you’re tired, you stop for a moment to observe the skyline; a full breath and you are ready to start again. Everything perfect … but that house always buzzed in my head. Yes, this abandoned farmhouse in front of our B&B, the old house of my grandparents and their ancestors, then left to its destiny once they build the new house.
“He” was the link with my past, those ancient stones deserved attention, but … So many “but” blocked me in a project that seemed bigger than us, in a temporal conjunction which proposed only caution. Sometimes, though, the most important decisions are taken with the heart. Against everything and everyone we left for this new adventure, the restoration!
From my grandparents, I heard so much about the last repair on the cottage, by the same Austro-Hungarian prisoners who reforest the Subasio in 1916. Passed one hundred years, the tower had need more than just a few trowel shots here and there!
With the utmost respect for a building with such history, preserving and honoring the past as much is possible, now every stone is back in place. We never understand, how our predecessors, without the aid of modern tools, managed to work and handle impressive sized stones also for the present times.
At farmhouse restoration just completed, this was definitely a challenging experience, it has, however, enriched our lives, has aggregated further us like family, binding ourselves inseparably to these places and their history.
Who will decide to visit us can evaluate the final result, good holiday in the beautiful Assisi!
