It was an unusual invasion: well-to-do people, most speaking strange tongues, and pulling their belongings behind them on little wheels. Arriving as couples, families, groups of friends, they spent money in the village shop and ate at its few restaurants. Feathers were occasionally ruffled when an outsider sat in some local’s chair at the bar but, overall, these “tourists” were seen as a good thing. This is not somewhere remote in the developing world, however, but Tuscany, just a few years ago. People often fail to grasp how much more there is to this region than Chiantishire and coach tours. Tuscany is bigger than Wales and almost as mountainous, with plenty of places where no one’s heard of Waitrose or – until recently – wheelie bags.
One of these villages, Semproniano, amid undulating woods and golden farmland in southern Tuscany, is Fulvio Ponzuoli’s childhood home, to which he returned in 2008 after a business career. He could see the potential of the 1,000-year-old village atop its wooded hill, and decided to develop it using a model dreamed up in Friuli, north-east Italy, in the 1980s as a way of reviving earthquake-ravaged communities. The model is the albergo diffuso, which translates best as “scattered hotel” and has really taken off this century. Rather than building a hotel to bring tourist euros into a picturesque village, or knocking buildings together, an albergo diffuso takes the more sustainable route of refurbishing empty or abandoned homes – generally within 150 metres of “reception” – as its guest rooms.
No comments:
Post a Comment