We have lived and worked in Le Marche for 14 years, after a complete life change. Often asked why we moved to rural Italy, maybe the answer is a little lost in the mists of time but we definitely craved for a life where there was space around us.
Literally, as in a large estate with land and potential!
Also inside ourselves, some space to develop our own interests and build a new way of living. Our children have grown up in Le Marche, so the Italian way of life is now ingrained but there are strong strands of English and German also in their culture.
Debby, Thomas, Dominik, Issy and Lara
Professional Profile
Thomas runs a successful holiday home services and project management business and is fully integrated and respected in our local area. German but multi lingual, even communicating in the local dialect!
Debby, from the UK, runs Casa Montalto and also works alongside an amazing group of people hosting culinary experiences. Passionate about natural living, cooking, preserving, growing food, nutrition, eating local and developing slow tourism in this beautiful, unspoilt, slightly off the beaten path region of Italy.
The Casa Montalto Story
2015 – now
The House and Estate
Casa Montalto main house was built in 1931. The family who owned the estate moved from the much older farmhouse ( now the ruin you can see from the lawn) Ines, who sold us the estate was just a young girl when her father built the house. I believe he wanted to make a statement, as the house can be seen from all sides off the valley it lies in! She later fell in love with a young man from the coast who amazingly cycled all the way here (uphill) to court her. They married and she moved to the coast, renting out the house and land over the years to tenants and farmers. None of her family ever moved back!
When we met her to ask her if we could buy the estate, Innes in her 80s couldn’t understand why on earth we would want to purchase a dilapidated old villa. The story of our early days must wait for a blog post.
We have restored the house, and kept many original features such as all the beautiful artisan ironwork, handmade in the 30s and the cotto floors. The ground floor was originally the stable area. When designing our ‘ Stable kitchen’, which we use for cooking lessons and events we kept the original animal troughs and the walls were left rustic, to reflect the history of the house.
