Villa La Cappella
A letter from the soul of Tuscany, with love.
Growing up Canadian-born children of Italian immigrants, my husband Anthony and I both lived in households steeped with all the customs and traditions our parents brought with them when they immigrated. We lived among neighbours with the same background, where Italian was spoken at home and by the local merchants. Many of us took extended summer vacations in Italy to spend time in the villages and towns where our parents were raised.
Once our daughters were born, we returned to visit these same towns and introduce them to their cultural roots. It was during those early trips, which included regular stops in Tuscany to visit family, that we fell in love with the region and began to plan: once we retired we would return – we’d run a bed and breakfast so that we could remain busy in retirement and introduce friends to this wonderful region.
Thus, in 2003, we began to search for the perfect property. The first one that we saw that summer was not really a home, but rubble with no roof. The rule in Tuscany is that you are not permitted to build new homes in the countryside. It is architecturally controlled, and owners can only restore homes to their original condition. That’s what makes the region so beautiful and unspoiled, but it also presents challenges to the owners of those properties. Rebuilding this home would have been a monumental challenge even if we were living in Italy, but doing it while working and living in Canada would have been too difficult.
We began our search years before retirement, knowing the restructuring would take many years to complete in a country where everything moves very slowly. We returned each year, often to visit properties that seemed like “the one,” but none of them were. The final such trip occurred right before the onset of COVID, and, once again, the property wasn’t the one. Locked up in our home in Toronto, it was beginning to look like our dream would never be realized.
Then, having agreed to put our search on hold, we stumbled upon Villa La Cappella. The villa was named after the chapel (cappella) that dates back to the 13th century and now serves as our home. The chapel and the villa were once both part of the property that belonged to the owners of the castle across the road from us, which also dates back to the 1200s. An 800-year-old property atop a hill in Tuscany that would permit us to host guests seemed like it could be “the one,” but given the COVID lockdown, we had no way of getting to Tuscany. We sent a cousin who lives near the villa to ensure it was, in fact, there (this is Italy, after all) and that it was as it appeared. Based on photos and our knowledge of the area, we made the decision to proceed – a decision that didn’t seem quite so crazy during COVID, but, of course, buying a villa and chapel from the 1200s sight unseen is crazy. Regardless, the travel restrictions meant it would be more than a year before we could close the deal.
When we finally made it back to Italy, we came directly to the villa and immediately realized the magnitude of what we had acquired. While we had never envisioned operating a villa this size, we were excited about the beauty and history of the property. The acquisition was supposed to close in January of 2022, but given the pace of everything in Italy, the closing of the deal dragged on until April 6, only four days before the first guests were set to arrive. We rushed to get the villa ready. The previous owners had managed to book up a good portion of the season and having never done this before, we would have to figure it out as we went along.
Now, as we prepare for our third season, we have made many upgrades to the property and continue to make improvements. Getting work done in Italy is probably the most challenging thing about this entire experience. Getting tradespeople to show up and complete a job is difficult enough, but the architectural control that makes Tuscany so beautiful means everything we do, including painting the villa, requires a permit from the local government, and there are only a handful of colours that are acceptable.
After only two seasons, we have had so many wonderful experiences that we look forward to the start of the season and genuinely miss our guests during the off-season. We have already built some incredible friendships with guests who have visited and with whom we’ve stayed in touch. While the villa had previously been operated as a hotel, we have sought to run it as a traditional B&B and treat our guests as “friends staying in our home.” We have been hosting friends for 30 years, so we approached it the only way we know.
Our guest book is filled with comments about how visitors felt like they were at home while staying at the villa, and there can be no greater compliment. We have received two travel and tourism awards, including B&B of the Year – Tuscany 2024. This season, we are offering week-long tours of the region, including a hands-on gelato class with a world champion gelato maker, a visit to the region’s finest Pecorino cheese maker, an e-bike tour through the Chianti vineyards, a professionally guided tour of Florence by the guide that showed Stanley Tucci around the city in his CNN special, as well as several other excursions, including to some of the finest wineries in the area. Our goal is to create special moments for our guests that become lifetime memories.
Our daughters are in London and Toronto, where they are studying and working, but they too have remained in contact with former guests living in those cities. The girls return each summer to spend part of the season here to help operate the villa and to welcome guests to our home. Our crazy decision seems to be working out pretty well so far.
