Małgorzata and Marcin
Before we met, each of us carried an image of a house in Tuscany. It was not a plan or a wish list, more a quiet longing that is hard to name and even harder to shake off. Today, when we step out onto the terrace in the morning and look across the Chianti hills, we sometimes catch ourselves thinking that it is the same longing, only now it has an address.
This is the story of how we got here. It was neither simple nor quick, but if we had to tell it again, we would not change a thing.
Two dreams, before we were “we”
Marcin: The first time I thought about it was many years ago, on my way back from a student internship in Bari. The road led through Tuscany, and somewhere along the way, between one hill and the next, a thought appeared: that one day I would like to have a home here.
Małgorzata: I, like many other people, fell in love with Tuscany after watching Under the Tuscan Sun. It is a film that still works the same magic today: it promises that you can begin again in a place where the light falls differently.
So we both carried the dream of a house straight out of a film, long before we began to share it.
The list we wrote every year
A few years before the pandemic, we decided that on every trip to Tuscany we would make a list of properties to see. We were amateurs in every sense of the word. We searched listings on idealista.it, arranged a few viewings, and went back to Warsaw with our heads full of views and not a single decision. Every year we saw a handful of properties, and every year we learned a little more about what we wanted and what we definitely did not.
2022. Almost
In 2022 we came very close. The property met all our criteria: it lay among vineyards and was part of a larger condominium, so we knew that while we were in Warsaw, someone would look after our part. There was security, and there were shared grounds. Everything seemed to fit.
But we knew almost nothing about how buying a property in Italy actually works. When we were already sure we would buy it, the agent called. Someone else had been quicker.
It was a disappointment, and we will not pretend otherwise. It was also a lesson we badly needed. If there is one thing we might once have wished to change, it is that phone call. And yet, without it, we would never have driven up this hill.
Last on the list
A year later we travelled to Tuscany a little wiser and, as every year, with a list.
Małgorzata: I put Podere L’Aquila at the very end. On the one hand, the photographs had won me over. On the other, common sense said this place was not for us: on a hill, far from anyone, in the woods, with no vineyards nearby. One criterion after another, and none of them matched.
We viewed four other properties first. None of them delighted us enough to say, “This is the one.” So, partly out of momentum and partly to tick off the last item, we set off up the hill.
Ten kilometres uphill, along bends, some of them turning back on themselves by almost 180 degrees.
Marcin: As the passenger, I was fighting a spinning inner ear and, I have to admit, swearing a little under my breath that this was a bad idea, because we were driving to the end of the world.
And then, at last, the view opened up.
Małgorzata: The view I saw then delights me just as much today. It was a beautiful, sunny May, and the valley lay before us as if someone had unrolled it just for us. I stopped counting what did not match.
We would not be alone on this hill
It turned out that the upper house, known to everyone as the villa, was for sale. Right next to it stood the farm, which was rented by a friendly German couple. As we later learned, they were wonderfully helpful: when we were in Poland, they were the ones keeping an eye on what was happening on the hill.
This time we did not repeat the mistake of 2022. We closed the deal after two months, making sure the place that was waiting for us did not end up in anyone else’s hands.
Renovating the house, and our first guests
The following year we began a complete renovation of the upper house. We wrote about how big a change it was in our previous post. We decided to keep the upper part of the house for ourselves and to turn the two lower apartments into holiday rentals.
We fell in love with this place. Every time we come here, the views delight us as they did the first time. We feel safe here, and at home. The first guests began to appear.
People who knew this place better than we did
Along the way we were given what may be the most important gift Tuscany has offered us: Lorena and Rolando. Both have been connected with this property for more than twenty years. They knew the first owner, who created this place in the 1980s, and they told us how alive it once was. We listened to those stories with growing curiosity.
They shared with us everything they knew about running a holiday property like ours. Not from books, not from guides, but from years of work in this very place. It is hard to overstate what that means when you start from zero in a foreign country, in a foreign language, in a profession nobody taught you.
When you want something enough
A thought began to take root in our minds: how wonderful it would be to join the upper house with the farm below, as it was hundreds of years ago. One hill, one house, one story.
In The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho wrote: “And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” We do not know whether it is always so. We do know that one August day in 2025 we were told that the owner of the neighbouring farm had put it up for sale.
We soon met Ernst and Christa, the farm’s previous owners, and in December 2025 we closed the deal. The hill is one whole again.
From then on, everything sped up
We began the first stage of the renovation: we replaced all the windows and entrance doors, freshened up our small restaurant, and, at great speed, started preparing for our first season. The formalities of opening the business are a chapter of their own, and one we would rather not repeat.
In May 2026 we welcomed our first guests. Thanks to Lorena and Rolando, our first season was a great success.
What comes next
More stages of renovation lie ahead, and we want to show them as they happen: what we are changing, why, and how it looks up close, not only in the “after” photograph.
If you would like to see this hill with your own eyes, visit podere-laquila.com or write to us on WhatsApp. And if, driving up the forest road, you start to wonder whether you are really heading in the right direction, that means you are close.
