What the house offers, described honestly
Ten things you will genuinely use over a week here, plus a plain account of what the building can and cannot do for guests with limited mobility.
01Amenities
Everything the house actually has
No inflated list. These are the things you will use, described the way we would describe them to a friend on the phone.
01
Fibre Wi-Fi throughout
A fibre line reaches the house, with mesh points in every room and on both terraces. It holds a video call from the roof terrace, which we have tested more often than we would like to admit. There is no charge and no time limit.
02
Breakfast, included every morning
Served from eight until ten on the long table under the pergola, or in the kitchen if the weather turns. Bread and focaccia from the bakery in San Quirico, ricotta and pecorino from the farm at the bottom of the hill, fruit from the garden in season, eggs cooked to order, and coffee that keeps coming.
03
Salt-water pool
Twelve metres, cut into the second terrace so it sits level with the view rather than above it. Salt rather than chlorine, so it is kind to skin and eyes. Open from late April to early October, with towels in the pool house and no set hours.
04
Two hectares of garden and olive grove
A walled garden by the house, then terraces of lavender and rosemary dropping down to around two hundred olive trees. The oil pressed from them is on the breakfast table. You are welcome anywhere on the land, and the walk to the top of the grove takes about ten minutes.
05
Air conditioning and heating
Quiet split units in every bedroom, controlled from the room, with underfloor heating downstairs for spring and autumn stays. The stone walls do most of the work in summer, so most guests use the units only at night in July and August.
06
Free parking in the courtyard
Space for five cars inside the gate, shaded by the fig tree from the middle of the afternoon. The last four hundred metres of the approach is a well-kept gravel track, comfortable in any ordinary car.
07
Guest kitchen and wood oven
A full kitchen guests are free to use, plus a wood-fired oven in the courtyard that Marco lights on Thursday evenings for anyone who wants to eat together. Bring something from the market or just bring a glass.
08
Laundry and drying line
A washing machine and an iron in the utility room, free to use, with detergent provided. There is a proper line in the kitchen garden, which in this climate dries a wash in about two hours.
09
Sitting room and library
A cool room with an open fire for the evenings, shelves of books left behind by fifteen years of guests, a record player, and a decent map of the valley with the good walks marked on it in pencil.
10
Help from people who live here
Elena books the restaurants, the cellar visits and the cookery lessons, and will tell you honestly which ones are worth the drive. Airport transfers from Florence, Pisa or Rome can be arranged with a few days' notice.
02Accessibility
A four-hundred-year-old building, and what that means
Restoring a protected farmhouse means we could not change the footprint, the openings or the staircases. Here is exactly what that leaves you with.
01
Step-free room and parking
The Garden Room is level with the courtyard, with no steps between the parking area and the bed. Its doorway is 84cm wide and the bathroom door is 76cm. The courtyard surface is compacted gravel rather than tarmac.
02
Stairs to the upper floors
The Sunlit Suite is up one flight of eighteen original stone steps, and the Terrace Loft is up a second flight of fourteen. Both staircases have a handrail on one side only. There is no lift, and the building is protected, so we cannot add one.
03
The pool and the garden
The pool is reached by nine shallow steps from the terrace, with a handrail, and it has a wide set of entry steps rather than a ladder. The garden paths are gravel and grass and the terraces slope, so a wheelchair or a walking frame will find the ground difficult beyond the courtyard.
04
Tell us and we will help
We would much rather have an honest conversation before you book than have you arrive and struggle. Write to us with what you need and we will tell you plainly whether the house works for you, and what we can move, borrow or arrange to make it work better.