The Altabella Story
“…I found myself, at the top of a hillside with southwestern views across rolling hills and
mountainous terrain, squarely on the border between Umbria and Tuscany…
Discovery of Pancesi: June 21, 1990
...In front of me were a series of once cultivated terraces, now blanketed in blackberries, and distant, virgin views, unchanged for generations, encircling the battered walls of a Romanesque bell tower, a few abandoned farms, and the crenellated corners of a castle keep, dating to the 9th century. Behind me, roofless, with trees growing between the floors, was the ruin of a once commanding casa colonica (farm house constructed by tenant farmers), brooding over a layered history still visible in building shards and cultivated plots in the near and far distance…"
Download Stone Grammarian: Finding Pancesi, by Katharine Michael
The Birth and On-going History of Amore Sapore
“Affairs” have always been a central part of the history of AMORE SAPORE and of its home base, the ALTABELLA VILLAS Estate.
By affairs, we mean affairs of real estate, restoration, horticulture, the Italian culinary arts—but most of all, affairs of the heart, which are, of course, where the “Amore” meets the “Sapore”.
PANCESI
Later rechristened LA PIETRA—was purchased in 1991 by a group of West Coast friends and business associates. In late 1991, Katharine moved from Berkeley, California to begin putting together a crew of local well-diggers, stonemasons, plumbers, and electricians to restore the ruined house, most of whom she worked with on a number of other stone house restorations over the next several years.
Describe your image
Describe your image
Describe your image
Describe your image
Near the completion of the La Pietra restoration, partners in the Pancesi venture, Elizabeth and Mark Wholey, left their graphic design business in Berkeley to join Katharine in the task of furnishing the restored house and helping to plant and maintain the gardens.
By 1993, the Wholey’s purchased their own antique house in the Niccone Valley, near Molino Vitelli, restored it, and continued to assist Katharine in myriad ways getting La Pietra ready for habitation by partners and outside guests. Their imprint is everywhere on the La Pietra property and in its on-going life.
In 1993, Pancesi/La Pietra opened for business, soon becoming a favored travel location for Altabella Partners and guests.
Casa Carina
In 1994, the Pancesi building crew began the restoration of the adjacent falling down barn, now known as Casa Carina.
In the fall of 1994, Jan Kalberer, another Pancesi partner, arrived in Umbria and became the first guest in the newly built Casa Carina.
Within a few months of her arrival—Jan made the providential suggestion that Katharine hire one of her new Italian friends, Paola Cesari, to assist in what was becoming an ever-growing enterprise. Fortunately, Paola, multi-gifted, stayed on to help write Altabella’s history.
La Quercia
In December 1994, Katharine and an Italian-born UC Berkeley professor of Bio-Chemistry, Giovanna Ferro-Luzzi Ames, purchased another crumbling casa colonica, known originally as CAPRARECCIA (Goat Path in Italian), soon to be renamed LA QUERCIA. Located a ten-minute walk from La Pietra, this house was probably once owned by relatives of the family who lived in Pancesi up until 1951, the year in which both houses were abandoned when the local, post-war (Communist) government built low-cost housing for the contadini (cultivators of the land) in the township of Umbertide.
Full restoration of La Quercia was completed in spring of 1997.
Purchasing Land from Count Andrea Sorbello
Throughout 1998, assisted by La Pietra partners, David Wood and Kathy Garrison, and later, by all the partners, Katharine struggled and ultimately succeeded in purchasing 63 hectares (approximately 156 acres) of land from the Ranieri Sorbello castle. (Therein lies a tale!). The purchase was finally concluded on December 16th of that year. The additional acreage surrounds La Pietra, La Quercia, and Casa Carina in all directions, and extends well down the driveway. Most importantly, the new land included a gorgeous, private meadow located below La Pietra and above La Quercia on which we could build a swimming pool surrounded by terraces and gardens.
The Pool
In the fall of 1999, we began construction of the pool. As we had projected that the pool would be finished by June of the year 2000, this complex construction and landscaping project involved a race against weather and time.
Woodhenge
A few years later, Barclay and Sharon Simpson, co-partners of Katharine’s in La Quercia, purchased Woodhenge, a massive four-piece sculpture hewn from a fallen sequoia tree with a platform of beaten copper in the shape of a mandala, by California artist, Bruce Johnson. They shipped the piece to Genoa where it was loaded on to a flat-bed truck and carried from that Mediterranean city across Tuscany to Umbria and up the Altabella driveway. The installation of Woodhenge on a platform of land below the pool and above La Quercia was a dramatic chapter in the ALTABELLA story — one demanding the talents of Bruce Johnson along with our Umbrian building crew.
Publications
Sustenance: Food Traditions in Italy’s Heartland
by Elizabeth Wholey (Available on Amazon UK )
Stone Grammarian: Finding Pancesi
by Katharine Ogden Michaels
(Download a copy here)
Marquese del Monte, Fondazione Ranieri di Sorbello.
