I’m French and my husband is Italian, from Florence. We own horses and when we were looking for a place to live, one of our criteria was to find somewhere suitable for riding both near the countryside and the sea. After much searching, we finally found a piece of land in the countryside with an old ruined house, ten minutes from the sea by bike or horse. We built Cicala on the land, a wooden house that blends in with nature.
The building is a wooden construction, covered with tiles, inspired by American barns. It runs on its own thanks to its solar panels and well. It is a lovely house to live in, always bathed in light. It is in the middle of a garden with terraces shaded by large plane trees and close to small woodland which keeps it cool in the hot summer weather.
My initial vision was based around a fireplace in the kitchen and a large library. Everything started from there. We created the project with my husband, a construction manager and his sister, an architect. We imagined the open space and the large kitchen because in Italy, more than anywhere else in the world, the kitchen is sacred. We were also careful to create spaces for our friends and especially for our three children. I wanted to decorate the house in the spirit of our family and I had fun hunting for objects in flea markets in France and Italy. My search for vintage wallpaper took me as far as 1950s stocks online in the United States, where I fell in love with one design after another!
A spacious house to accommodate large families. Its best feature is that it can gather children of different ages and that all of them can have space so that they can also enjoy activities on their own when they want! It is a paradise for children and adults who can do everything by bike. The house is located in natural surroundings where there are so many activities whether at the sea or in the mountains. The beaches near the house are maintained from May to September. The "bagni" have that particular Italian charm of times gone by. You can eat well and have a shower after swimming. It's a totally different experience of going to the seaside!
Pietrasanta is a charming medieval town and a fantastic, free, open-air museum. It is the capital of artistic marble processing and nicknamed "Little Athens". The town is located near the famous Carrara marble quarries. It has been a model for sculptors and artists since the late Middle Ages and became particularly famous after Michelangelo noticed the beauty of the local stone and began using it. It is also possible to rent a "gommone" (a small boat) in Bocca di Magra, spend a day in the "Cinque Terre" and discover the five centuries' old majestic villages painted in all the colours of the rainbow. My favourite is Vernazza. A day in the Apuan Alps, a mountain range between the Magra and Serchio rivers, provides some welcome coolness in the middle of summer. Staying at home and enjoying the excellent food prepared by Nadee who runs the place and who is also a wonderful cook is always a good idea too!
The ground floor contains the living areas and four double bedrooms. Two of them share a bathroom and can be arranged with one double bed or two singles. The other two bedrooms have their own bathroom. On the first floor there is a double room with its own bathroom, as well as an eight-bed dormitory and a bathroom. The basement, with a window to the outside, has a double room and a bathroom as well as a playroom with a projector.
ref 710373
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