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Our Story
A dream come true….twice!
Giovanni’s story
La Marginella was brought back by Giovanni Cavalzani. Born in Collodi, the next village over — Pinocchio’s village — he spent decades away: Paris, London, Rome, Heidelberg, Munich. Then years looking for a stone house in the hills he came from. And he found it – La Marginella.
He rebuilt it over seven years, without a day off, using what was already here. The three-hundred-year-old Tuscan stone came down and went back up. The chestnut beams are the 300-yr old restored beams. The bricks are the ones fired for this house. The (future) wine cellar is the old pig stall. The oil from the estate is certified Biologico and carries IGP Toscano.
Giovanni is more friend and neighbor than host: Ask him about the house and you will lose an afternoon, happily
We fell in love in Tuscany, got engaged here, and came back for our honeymoon — with parents in tow, which tells you most of what you need to know about how we travel. We are an American-Czech couple: home is Prague, the children answer in whichever of their five languages arrives first, and Tuscany is where the whole family agrees.
Seven years ago we let our son and daughter pick the family holiday from a shortlist. They chose La Marginella, a stone farmhouse in the hills above Pescia. We have come back every year since.
Giovanni and I became friends over those years. When he began thinking about who would look after La Marginella next, he was in no hurry and clear about what mattered: the house had to have a next thirty years as good as the thirty he had given it. Two years later its care passed to our family — and Giovanni is still here, on the land every day.
That care never let up in thirty years. It is what we intend to give the next thirty.