Episode Details

Note: if you found this interesting, you can follow the renovation of Tenuta Augusta at their Instagram profile.

[00:00:00] Luca: We were about to do a podcast on a very sad topic of how Italy’s beautiful natural landscapes are being built over and covered in concrete. But then we decided halfway through that it was so sad. We were going to answer some of your questions instead from when we published the Italian buying property guide last week. [00:00:22] Anna: Yeah, basically Luca is restoring this beautiful villa near Venice and we thought that it was a nice topic to talk about, to share the practical lessons for anyone else dreaming of doing this. [00:00:38] Luca: Thank you. I’m happy to provide my knowledge to our listeners. [00:00:41] Anna: So my question is, how did you end up with this villa to restore? Like why? [00:00:49] Luca: It didn’t fall on my lap, if that’s what you’re asking. And you know that because actually Anna has been helping me a lot with the social media for the project. [00:00:58] This villa Tenuta Augusta was a, I was a bit derelict by the time I set my eye on it. I’ve done quite a few restorations around the world and when I came back to Italy a few years ago, I decided to help to the degree that I am, the country by bringing some old and unloved properties back to life. [00:01:24] And Tenuta Augusta is exactly that. It is a 16th century villa in the countryside, in the hills, not far from Venice. Just as you said. It was built by this nobleman back in the 15 hundreds, his family. And at the beginning it was a working farm. We know this because I went to the National Archives and they found his tax returns from 1671. And at some point they decided to revamp it and live in it . This family then fell into we don’t exactly know what happened. They either ran outta money or they died out, or both. Since no one has that last name anymore in the area. [00:02:09] And then it passed from family to family until an old school teacher owned it for the past 40 years. She died maybe 10 years ago, and then it was just left there to rot. So we made it our mission to bring it back to life. [00:02:28] Anna: I think that renovating this property is like doing a puzzle because you’ve discovered so many things. Just renovating each floor of villa. And an interesting topic that I thought about . What makes us fall in love. We have this willingness of to fall in love with places that we think could be something rather than just find a place that’s ready to live in or in this case to host people. [00:02:56] And sometimes, it’s better because you waste less time on problems, but oh, it’s [00:03:02] Luca: certainly faster to buy something new. [00:03:04] Anna: Yeah. But I’m talking about like the process itself. At a certain point it becomes like a drug. Like you, you fall in love with the process of imagining of the potential itself. Do you want describe a little bit of this? [00:03:19] Luca: That is absolutely true. I have a great degree of admiration for Michaelangelo, who as a great sculptor, he described this creative process as looking at a stone and taking away. The excess, what was on top of the shape that he imagined inside that is so inside. [00:03:41] And that’s too much for me. I think it’s too much for most people to just imagine something new and then have at it, go from idea to creation and maybe a step down from that level of genius and divinity is to take something that was beautiful and restore. It in this case, unfortuna