A New Plot
By Erin Florio, Conde Nast Traveler Magazine, August 2016
Castello di Reschio forms part of a chain of walled settlements in proximity of the Tuscan/Umbrian boundaries. Today it is part of the communal territory of Lisciano Niccone, province of Perugia. The Bolza's have plans to renovate the abandoned castle into a high-end hotel.
When Count Bolza discovered a neglected estate in Central Italy, he saw the chance to regain something he’d lost - and to create a private idyll for others wanting exactly the same thing.
About 30 years ago, Count Antonio Bolza decided to throw in the towel on his family’s ritual vacation to Tuscan’s Forte dei Marmi - precisely because too may other towels had started spreading along its sandy shoreline. Instead, the Hungarian-born publishing executive, who was living near Munich with his wife and five kids, bought a quiet old country house in Tuscany’s neighboring - but much less discovered - region of Umbria.
There, the family could swim, stroll the olive groves and ride horses in what they felt Tuscany could no longer offer them: privacy. So when the Count, who had been forced from Hungary along with his aristocratic parents in 1949, during the Stalinist era, noted two empty houses that were settling close to his new vacation home, he decided to buy them.
He spent three years phoning their industrialist owners, who lived up north, asking them to sell. Each call ended in a categorical “no” until, finally, came a conditional “si.” In addition to those two homes, the Count would have to buy the surrounding estate of Reschio, nearly 3,000 acres encompassing vineyards, forests, a 1,000 year old castle and 48 other dilapidated farmhouses.
Umbria is full of centuries-old borghi, hamlets that were abandoned during urban migrations following World War II. But the Bolzas are reviving Reschio into something the area hasn’t seen before - a collection of vacation homes rebuilt using local materials on the soulful old bones of 50 crumbling structures. “Getting Reschio was the most important thing in my father’s life,” says his 42 years old son Benedikt, an architect who now lives on the property with his wife and children. “It meant he could restore that family center which he had watched his own parents lose.”
In order to maintain the estate and help with the costs, Count Antonio, who now lives in Umbria full-time, began selling plots of land to private owners, then custom-building homes for them on the old footprints (Umbrian law prohibits new builds) - 24 have been completed so far. His company also manages the properties for those owners who wish to rent them out (currently there are six, and there are also plans to turn the castle into a hotel for guests seeking shorter stays).
But this is hardly some cookie-cutter community. “Reschio is different because it has a soul,” says Benedikt, who designs and constructs the residences, down to the brass-and-copper doorknobs. “We do things slowly, carefully, and with passion.”
Over 500 people lived and farmed the estate back in 1901. The Torre di Reschio, situated next to the 11th Century castle, was then the smallest dwelling on the estate. Photograph courtesy of the private photo archive of Marchese Tommaso Bichi Ruspoli, whose ancestors owned the estate from 1692 to 1932.
His efforts attract a money-is-no-object clientele eager for the patina of a tastefully rescued Italianate ruin. For up to $22 million, the homeowners - Europeans, Kiwis, Americans, and Persians in fields from finance to fashion - get two and a half acres with a pool and a home decorated to their specifications. (That may mean Sienese stone, salvaged barn wood, and hand-mixed wall paint applied by Benedikt’s muralist wife, Nencia Corcini, plus furniture crafted by Benedikt and his team of 100 local artisans.)
One of the 24 renovated homes.
They also gain access to the rest of the property, where mornings may be spent walking the oak-lined forest trails, playing tennis, or riding one of the Count’s 40 pure-bred Andalusians, which live in the stables. Vacationers can take farm-to-table literally, foraging for truffles, tasting wines from the estate’s sangiovese vineyards, or hunting wild boar, then having Neapolitan chef Rosario Russo prepare it for lunch with salads straight from the garden at the property’s restaurant.
The back-to-nature lifestyle is definitely a draw. “We want people here because they love the landscape” Benedikt says. But the cornerstone of it all is the glorious seclusion Count Antonio originally fell for. Each house us built almost completely out of the view of the others, and will always remain so. And though everyone is welcome to socialize during Benedikt’s cocktail parties on the lawn, or over Russo;s meals of deer carpaccio and pasta, most prefer to lay low. “The owners don’t buy here for other people,” Benedikt says. “They have enough friends.”