In the beginning
In 2015, my wife, Ana, and I decided to downsize our lives in London, moving into a smaller apartment and freeing ourselves up to look at a change of direction.
We already had a connection to the Garfagnana, an area in the north of Tuscany in the Apennine mountains. Very different from the rolling hills and cypress trees of the south, the Garfagnana is more isolated, mountains instead of hills, and covered in forests. Italians are familiar with the area but it was not well known outside Italy and attracted few tourists.
We had driven past a property called La Rupina many times and when we found out it was on the market we made the decision to buy it. The house came with a roomy barn and 3.5 hectares (about 8.5 acres) of mixed woodland, terraced hillsides, and flat fields.
Looking back, it was a very impulsive move and it came with consequences. I don't regret it at all but things have certainly not turned out as planned.
This blog is all about what happened next and how things continue to unfold.
La Rupina is an old farmhouse. Based on some of the materials used in its construction, we think it was probably built before the mid-17th century.
What you see in the pictures is certainly not the original layout. It started out as a much simpler and smaller two-storey building. Probably with two rooms upstairs and two down - a barn and storage downstairs and some kind of living quarters upstairs.
At some point an extra floor was added and then sometime after that a whole new half was added on the front, which would have doubled the space.
From the outside of the house, La Rupina looks typical of other old houses in the area. It has a ‘rock and rubble’ construction; rock walls inside and out held together with lime mortar, and between these two layers, rubble is used to fill the gap and give the wall stability.
Inside though, things were a different story. The house had gone through a conversion, probably in the 1970's or ‘80's and the original wooden floors and beams had all been replaced with steel beams and concrete. This was a common thing to do at the time as the wooden floors were a fire hazard and difficult to keep clean, and the gaps between the boards meant it was very difficult to keep the rooms warm. Replacing them with tiled floors, with flat white walls and electrics buried in the wall, probably felt like a leap into the modern world.
But it didn't stop there, when the floor upstairs was removed to make a ceiling, it was also raised by about a meter into the rooms above. This effectively removed the upper floor, turning it into a loft/storage space that you could barely stand up in. The staircase was also removed and the only access to upstairs was through a small loft hatch.
It was explained to us when we bought the property that we would never, ever be able to return it to its original state. The renovations had been put into the official records and, apparently, once this was done further changes would be impossible as the old layout would never comply with current building regulations, which would require a much greater ceiling height.
So we were told to just forget any thoughts of changing it back again, it would never happen......... or so everyone said.
The house
The barn
We knew before we bought the house there was going to be a problem with the barn. You could see that the outer wall was leaning over and there were substantial cracks in the walls.
Later, we found out that sometime in the past there had been a landslide in the area below the barn and the land was considered unstable. We would never get permission to renovate it into anything.
This was a bit of a blow as we had hoped to use the barn to create a vacation rental that could cater to people with disabilities. Ana is a very experienced Occupational Therapist and the plan was to renovate the barn into a fully wheelchair-accessible property so disabled travelers would be able to have a holiday in Tuscany.
There was an alternative but it was going to be an extreme solution and that was to demolish it and rebuild it somewhere else. More on this in "New house construction"
The land
We sit on 3.5 hectares of land that has just about the perfect mix of woodland, large terracing, and flat fields. Behind the house is the largest of the fields at 90m x 50m, below the new house we also have two large terraces at about 20m x 15m and several deep long terraces that wrap around the whole property.
Then as you go down the side of the mountain there are about 2 hectares of mixed woodland. A lot of this is actually abandoned terracing so the trees are not old growth but they are still big enough, and in the mix we have some chestnut, poplar, and Italian maple, all of which grow pretty large. This woodland area is easily enough to support our wood-burning stoves.
And along the bottom is our stream. We have about 250m of fantastic plunge pools and waterfalls. The water is crystal clear as there is nothing between us and the source of the stream.