The Journal

The journal

This is the part of the site that keeps moving. Everywhere else we try to be the definitive, checked answer to a question; here we write in real time – what’s on this month, what’s just opened, and the honest week-by-week of the restoration.

Facts checked: July 2026. Field notes from Collestatte – what’s happening in the valley this month, and the running story of bringing an Art Nouveau villa back to life.

What you’ll find here

Four kinds of post, published as there’s genuinely something to say (not to a filler schedule):

• This month in the Valnerina – a short monthly note: the current falls timetable in plain terms, what’s flowering or ripe, the festival or market worth the drive, and the honest crowd read.
• The restoration diary – the villa’s transformation, before-and-after, the things that go wrong, the craftspeople, the finds. This is the story we’re most often asked about, and the “before” photographs already exist.
• Festival and event reports – first-hand write-ups after we’ve actually been (the Corsa all’Anello, the Festa delle Acque, the d’Aloja regatta), not previews copied from a press release.
• News – things that change the visit: a cycleway section opening, the Narnia film’s release, a new opening in the valley.

Why a journal at all

Two reasons, honestly. It’s useful – a living page beats a static one for “what’s it like right now“. And it’s the human side of a house you might trust with a holiday: the people restoring it, in their own words, showing their work. How we write — and check — everything →

Start of the story

The first entries begin as the restoration reaches its next stages – we’ll date each honestly and photograph it ourselves. We won’t back-fill invented posts to look busy; the diary starts where the work is.