Houses of the Month
An European Historic Houses project
With great pleasure we accepted the invitation of EHH, the European Association that represents more than fifty thousand private historic houses in Europe entrusted almost exclusively to the care of their owners, to take part in the project "Houses of the Month". It’s a collection of 20-minute long videos divided in four themes: gardens, restoration works, local productions and traces of the European History.
They’re direct, personal videos, in English, although often spoken with a strong accent of the native language that despite all their imperfections ,spotlight on the passion, talent, courage and hard work of the owners, as well as the importance of such buildings in our common History.
Synergies in the family
The kindness and solicitude with which EHH welcomed the application of Casa dell’Abate Naldi gave us confidence, but we wouldn’t have been able to make the video by ourselves and we were not intended to shoot a professional one.
In such cases the help of the family is important: Matthias, our son in law, who’s now running our family estate with our daughter Luisa ,is an audio-video engineer and before moving to Italy he worked for many years in this field. Given his initial experience it was not easy to convince him to make a non-professional video, without specific editing equipment or programs, but we are very happy and grateful that he accepted this task. On the other hand, I am not a professional guide and I wouldn’t have felt comfortable speaking in front of a stranger.
In addition I decided to talk free instead of following a track: there is so much to say and to show in the house that the greatest risk is to get lost in the speech rather than remain without subjects.
The synergy worked perfectly: Matthias knew what I was talking about at all times and he chose the right shot without hesitation; I was speaking to an imaginary audience but his conscious involvement gave me confidence and courage of going on.
Camera, light,action!
San Quirico d’Orcia in the XVII century
The video begins on Via Dante Alighieri, the main street of San Quirico d'Orcia. In the reproduction of a map of the seventeenth century you can see Casa dell’Abate Naldi on the main street.
The house was built in fact for Matteo Naldi, personal doctor of His Holiness Pope Alexander VII, whose first name was Fabio Chigi.
Going up to the first floor, through a very bright hall where the plants find an ideal environment in every season, you enter the decorated drawing room that overlooks the Via Dante. Here you can immediately perceive how history is layered in every detail of the house: the terracotta floor and the decorated doors belong to the period of its construction while the decorations on the walls tell the story of the Simonelli family (of which we are descendants) , who inhabited the house after Matteo Naldi.
The coats-of-arms painted on the walls or carved in travertine are mostly those of the Simonelli family, but you can also see the coats-of-arms of the families who were bonded to them by marriage.
You can trace the history through the books of the library. There’s one of the oldest, by Matteo Naldi himself, and those written by colleagues of his time or by the naturalist Giorgio Santi one hundred years later.
The tour take us through the “Garden Room”, that features four beautiful wall-mounted bookcases with the same decoration of the doors that open in this room, and finally in the garden, one of the most pleasant living environments in the good season. It’s a little Italian Garden,with boxwood edges, luckily small enough that we can look after it ourselves. Only on the side flower-beds we grow herbs for the kitchen and flowers for the table.
A must stop is in the dining room where the table is set with my grand-grandmother hand painted tableware and the old engraved glasses and the fireplace is working. Here we have our family meals ans sometimes organize special dinners upon request as home restaurant, that we call “back-in-time dinners”.
The tableware is fragile and must be washed by hand but we like to use them occasionally, to give these objects a second life, to keep them alive in a lively home.
At the end Matthias and I climb a narrow staircase and we reach the little tower the overlooks San Quirico rooftops. From here you can see the Valdorcia, the Monte Amiata, Pienza, Montalcino – famous for the Brunello wine – and see very near the white road through the fields that leads to our beloved family estate “Il Rigo”, the pumping heart of our activity.
Thank you for following us up here! If we did intrigue you... watch the video on the European Historic Houses You Tube Channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMm6GFvldw8
““I am sure that houses try to talk, to be loved, and sometimes I understand ghosts: how not to return from death, to visit the houses we love? I will be a tireless ghost”.
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I Prossimi Eventi
La Casa dell’Abate Naldi ospita le Lezioni di Cucina de Gli Archi Culinary School, eventi musicali, mostre di Arte ed Artigianato.
Clicca sui giorni del Calendario per scoprire quali sono i prossimi eventi, ti invitiamo a partecipare e a venire a conoscerci a S. Quirico d’Orcia, in Toscana.