Why Stay In Our Apartments?

Because…

Just outside our Assisi medieval-center apartment

all guests staying in our apartments for at least a week are invited to a banquet dinner in our Assisi farmhouse
all guests staying for a minimum of two weeks – in fall or in springtime – are invited to join in one of my shared, small-group hill town tours
as the only American authorized Guida Regionale dell’Umbria, my objective is to share the “hidden secrets” of Umbria with my tour guests, while connecting them to the Umbrian people.
Assisi is so central to exploration of Umbrian medieval hilltown wonders (as well as those of southern Tuscany, northern Latium, Abruzzo and the Marches) and Rome and Florence are just over 2 hours away by train

You might wonder why we have an in-town Assisi rental apartment…

Since 1975, my husband Pino and I have lived in the Assisi countryside, about six kilometers from the town and we love our life ”on the land.”

But Assisi is “our” town: Pino’s building team has restored many a medieval Assisi palazzo and I am often in town for my work as a tour guide, reveling in the the medieval backstreet beauty with my tour guests. In late fall 2011, I came across a tiny apartment in the Assisi backstreets: vendesi (“for sale”).

It was an adventure – and a joy – to transform it into an intimate “tranquil nest,” incorporating artisan crafts – past and present – as well as a bit of contemporary Italian design. Explore the wonders all around, in Assisi and in the medieval hilltowns of Umbria and surrounding regions. Then come home to the serenity.

Click here to read about – and see! – the transformation.

…and why the countryside apartments, right behind our farmhouse?

Pino and I moved to the land outside of Assisi in 1975, renting a crumbling rural farmhouse on nine acres of wooded land for about $25 per month: a fair price price for a ruin with no heat, no bathroom, no electricity nor running hot water, a leaky roof, and the dirt road was practically impassable. Someday, the book might be written on those memorable years working the land…! (In the meantime, I’m telling the stories.)

In 1987, with our three young children, we moved “temporarily” into a new house behind the farmhouse that Pino had built. We lived there while Pino restored our rural ruin – and now that we’re back in our farmhouse, Pino’s restoration team has transformed “the new house” into comfortable apartments.

And what better than restoration by Assisi’s best construction company?
(…and right in the family!)