You can only get there on foot by taking an ancient Napoleonic trail through a forest that’s a tangle of chestnut trees and dense vegetation. The small house is made from stone, lime and wood, and clings to the mountain, overlooking the breathtaking panorama of sky and sea of the Cinque Terre. Situated on the coast of Liguria, in Italy, it’s an area characterised by the presence of five ancient agricultural villages overlooking the sea.
“My partner and I have been frequenting this area for more than 15 years, where we’ve had another house that’s been our refuge for many weekends and holidays,” says interior designer Stella Orsini. “But this house was a ruined agricultural building, on the land next to ours; after looking at it for years, watching as the brambles covered it over more and more, we decided to buy it.”
The restructuring was complex and took a long time because the house was dismantled and rebuilt from zero. Access has to be on foot, and most of materials for the restructuring arrived by helicopter. The original stones of the house were reused to clad it: very difficult, precision work carried out by specialist craftsmen.
In 2020, by which time the only missing parts were the services and the internal finishes, the pandemic broke out and none of the suppliers were able to come any more. “We ended up spending the first three-month lockdown here by ourselves; during that period we finished all the…
