About Us
why and how we created iCastagni

any regrets? not one.
Our Story
We had been Italy fans for years. We had honeymooned in Italy and had vacationed there every year for as long as we could remember. One day during a summer stay in Tuscany we stumbled upon the village of Montefollonico and it changed our lives.
We remember entering the village through its ancient stone arch and having a cappuccino at the cafe on the village piazza; an impromptu, unplanned stop. It was a beautiful sunny day and we lingered, enjoying the warmth and watching people go about their daily business. They crossed the piazza to get from one place to the next, exchanging a few words with each other as they did so, or occasionally rested on a stone bench in the shade and exchanged more than a few words, almost all of them peppered with hand gestures. We couldn't understand a thing but we felt captured by the special charm of the place; the village was untouched but alive and thriving, beautifully preserved but there wasn't a tourist in sight. It felt truly authentic and so very Italian, yet we felt welcome and at ease. Hooked, we wanted to explore more. We saw a small hotel and went in to try and ask a few questions. We ate lunch at the village restaurant and stretched our stay as long as we could before having to return to our accommodation an hour's drive away. The next day we drove back to Montefollonico; the next year we vacationed there; and we did the same the year after; and the next; and the next; and then we learnt Italian, decided to move to the village full-time; bought the hotel which had miraculously come onto the market for sale; renovated it with the village builder as his last job before retirement, and then renamed it. We accepted each and every invitation from the curious residents we now call friends and some of them are now pivotal to the running of the property as a business. Any regrets? Not one.
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