Episode Information Tuscany: The Ancient Castle

Date Published:

13/06/2008

The Project

This week Kevin meets a couple who bought a ruin and moved to Italy in 1999, hoping to start work building their dream home in Tuscany. Since then they've spent all their time trying to get planning permission, but finally, after four years, they are about to start work. And it's an epic project: they have bought a derelict 1,000-year-old castle in the Tuscan hills. Now the couple face their biggest battle of all: rebuilding this massive ruin into a comfortable and luxurious five-bedroom home...

Budget And Build

The Cost

Estimated Budget: £350,000
Final Budget: £700,000

There were times when the project, like the castle, seemed doomed. The castello had, after all, been struck by earthquakes and the bombs of the Second World War. When, four years ago, Janne and Howard bought the ruin, there were other destructive demons to overcome; conflicting planning advice, bureaucracy and the worst winter for decades.

The horror on the face of their Italian builder, Claudio Maggini, told its own story. You can't cut corners over building regulations - and certainly not when they concern a monument of historic and cultural significance. Janne may have fretted at the need to wait further on parish planning consent, when the Italian state itself had granted permission; but she herself appreciated as much as anybody that the castello, historically and culturally, also belonged to the comune. There was also the practical consideration which Claudio mentioned, that a breach of regulations carried with it a prison sentence.

When at last the ink was dry, the signatures on the appropriate dotted lines, down fell the snow. All the builder could do was put up some optimistic scaffolding and go off on a skiing holiday. Spring traditionally brings a fresh start, but for the castello it meant a deliberate step backwards. Some of the work already done had to be torn down.

Ideally, Howard would have liked to be truthful to the castle's thousand-year-old origins. But the comune lies on an earthquake fault line. It is futile to restore an ancient monument and leave it exposed to the forces of nature. So the couple accepted the compromise of using modern materials - earthquake-resistant bricks and cement, which the law requires - covered by the veneer of authentic stonework.

When it came to the restoration of the interior, battles (albeit always good-natured) lay ahead for Janne, Howard and the dynamic duo. What, after all, is truly authentic? Go to any renovated Tuscan farmhouse and you'll see the authentic dark chestnut beams, the authentic ceiling tiles or mattone, the authentic raw, bricked vaulting. In fact, a grand castello might have had splendid oak beams and plastered ceilings; but that wouldn't fit in with the accepted Tuscan vernacular.

There was much eye-rolling and many sotto voce exclamations of 'Mama Mia' - the Tuscan equivalent of the British builder's sucking of the teeth and wagging of the head in mock, exasperated bewilderment - before Janne got her way. The 7.5 metre beams are oak. They look like oak. And no power on earth - not even Italian conservation rules - will make her stain them to look like inferior chestnut.

Architecturally, the castello is the pride of the comune. Politically and socially the rebuilt castello has to be accepted, rather than imposed. There is probably no more telling tribute to that acceptance than the return by a neighbour of stones 'borrowed' after the castle's dilapidation to complete the authentic restoration. Two stone pieces in particular were identified as the missing column and plinth from the castle's original Romeo and Juliet loggia.

Restoration is a dialogue; a dialogue between the historic and the contemporary, between the owner and the community, between the creative tastes of builder and designer. Dialogue can be heated, angry, antagonistic, and frustrating. But compromise can be creative. What matters, above all, is the integrity of the project.

If Janne, Howard, the builders, the planners and the comune are satisfied - then the castle deserves to stand for another thousand years.