This is the story of the restoration of a barn in Tuscany conducted by my friends Sara and Allen. Sara wrote this post for the website Wandering Educators. This is just the beginning of the article to tempt you – read the rest here.

In 1994 Allen and I bought the property we had been renting for over 10 years. The reasons why we ended up in Tuscany – on a hilltop in the Valdarno – are totally serendipitous, and entirely too long to go into here. But we did it, and lived in happy nonchalance, raising our daughter and commuting to work in Florence until the economic crunch began to make itself felt. In 2005 we had the belated realisation that this property had better help maintain itself, otherwise we would find it very difficult to keep up the land and buildings after we retired. I keep buying lottery tickets with blind faith, but in the meantime we bit the bullet, hocked our souls to the Banca Toscana, and decided to carry out a dream: to restore and convert the villa’s barn into a rental cottage…
Read the full story on Wandering Educators!
Alexandra Korey
Alexandra Korey aka @arttrav on social media, is a Florence-based writer and digital consultant. Her blog, ArtTrav has been online since 2004.
Related Posts
October 27, 2025
Art and Wine in Montalcino: the Artisti per Frescobaldi Project
September 11, 2025
The astonishing restoration of Lucca’s Volto Santo
March 9, 2025
Daniel Buren in Pistoia
November 17, 2021




