Why San Donato? Finding Our Village in the Comino Valley
When we started looking for a house in the Comino Valley, we didn't immediately decide on San Donato. Officially recognised as one of I Borghi più belli d'Italia, one of Italy's most beautiful villages, it certainly had beauty on its side, but in truth we spent quite a few joyful months driving around looking at all kinds of places. At some point we may have forgotten we were looking for a house altogether and begun to think we were simply on an extended Italian adventure, albeit one involving an unusual number of estate agent meetings, abandoned buildings and conversations about damp.
It certainly helped that one of us was already on the ground in Italy. Buying a house here from another country would have been a very different proposition. As it was, we gradually learned to trust that the right thing would eventually fall into place.
The villages of the Comino Valley
The villages of the Comino Valley sit remarkably close together, but each has its own personality. Alvito rises rather grandly up the hillside, its sepia-coloured old town climbing towards the ruins of its medieval castle. Gallinaro is smaller and more intimate. Atina has a different character again, while Picinisco and Settefrati sit closer to the mountains. We became rather fond of all of them, each making a slightly different case for itself.
But we kept coming back to San Donato Val di Comino.
Perhaps it was the stone. San Donato is historically a town of scalpellini, or stonemasons, and you can see the legacy of that craftsmanship everywhere. The historic centre is a maze of stone houses, arches, steps, tiny squares and covered passageways. The stone itself has a wonderful warmth to it, shifting between honey, sand and faded peach in the changing light.
The Comune takes the appearance of the historic village seriously. Even the eventual colour of The Nook's exterior will have to sit within the approved local palette. For two people capable of spending an unreasonable amount of time discussing precisely the right shade of faded plaster, we rather approve. We may finally have found a local authority whose attitude towards colour charts is as intense as our own!
Finding our corner of San Donato
Beautiful stone wasn't enough reason to buy a house, though. What really tipped the balance was that San Donato felt alive. And, oh, it is so pretty!
The location of The Nook could hardly be better. Our little house sits just off the centre, with a coffee shop and bar behind it on a beautiful piazza. A few minutes' walk away is Osteria Ficcanaso on Piazza Carlo Coletti, run by brothers Marcello and Lorenzo, where local ingredients and the food traditions of this part of Lazio meet ideas brought home from years spent working abroad.
We also already had a connection to the village. Good friends had moved from England to San Donato earlier in the year to run a lovely B&B nearby, while other friends and family were scattered around San Donato, Alvito and the wider valley. We weren't buying in San Donato entirely as strangers.
Then came August.
For most of the year San Donato is a working Italian mountain town, but in summer it seems to expand. Families return, the streets fill and the calendar becomes a succession of festas, marching bands, processions, food stalls and celebrations. We found ourselves caught up one evening at a medieval event involving costumes and archery, lining up to have a go at shooting an arrow into a hay bale. During the celebrations for San Donato itself, the village's patron saint, the streets fill with pilgrims, music and festivities. There is a wonderful sense that the whole town has simply come outside.
There is, however, a small downside to all this merriment if you happen to be attempting to renovate a house. August is not the month in which to expect spectacular progress!
One of us, accustomed to timetables, deadlines and the comforting fiction that a plan will be followed because it’s written down, is doing quite a lot of metaphorical breathwork. The other, the Irish-Italian half of this operation, genuinely cannot understand what all the concern is about. Things will happen. When will they happen? When they happen. So far, charm and calm are winning.
The people who left, and the people who come back
That great summer return is part of a much bigger story. For generations, people left the Comino Valley in search of work, with emigration accelerating through the difficult decades after the Second World War and permanently changing the population of the area. San Donato developed particularly strong connections with the United States, while families from elsewhere in the Comino Valley scattered across Europe and across the Atlantic. Their descendants didn't necessarily forget where they came from.
One of the unexpected pleasures of sharing The Nook on Instagram has been receiving messages from people thousands of miles away who somehow know this tiny Italian town. We are always curious and tend to ask the same question: how do you know San Donato? Almost invariably, the answer begins with family. A grandparent came from here. A father was born here. Their family still returns every summer. There is something rather lovely about discovering that a place which can feel almost unknown outside this corner of Italy has little threads running out from it all over the world. Many of the visitors you meet here aren't really tourists at all. They are returning to somewhere that has remained part of their family story, sometimes generations after somebody first left.
A place that is still a place
Perhaps that explains something else we liked about San Donato and the wider Comino Valley. These aren't villages preserved for visitors, nor have they become rows of beautiful houses owned by foreigners who largely socialise with one another. Sorry, Tuscany.
They are still communities, with all the relationships, histories and complicated social networks that word implies. You arrive as a visitor, but if you stay for any length of time you find yourself meeting people, being introduced to someone's cousin, stopping for conversations and gradually becoming part of the everyday rhythm of the place.
One of us lives in London and has somehow made more new friends during a few months in Italy than during the previous few years at home. This has created a new problem: the desperate race for her Italian to catch up with her social life. Duolingo is currently doing some very heavy lifting, although we suspect more drastic intervention may soon be required.
Coming from a big city, the sociability can take a moment to adjust to. You become accustomed to anonymity and perhaps even a little suspicious when strangers are friendly for no obvious reason. Here, the conviviality is real. People stop. They talk. They introduce you to somebody. Somebody knows somebody you met yesterday. Coffee can take considerably longer than anticipated and attempting to pay for it becomes a competitive sport. If you are standing at a bar with Italian friends, someone will inevitably have paid before you've worked out what is happening. Your only defence is to remember and get there first next time.
The same principle applies to errands. Whatever Google Maps tells you, double the time. Possibly triple it. Running into somebody on the way means stopping for a proper conversation. One of us can turn a trip to the butcher, supermarket or hardware shop into several hours of conversations in car parks and on pavements. We have consequently revised The Nook restoration timetable. Significantly.
We love it, though. The architecture drew us in, the piazzas and mountains helped, and finding our tiny stone house certainly made us fall in love with the place. But ultimately we wanted The Nook to belong somewhere that still felt like a real place rather than simply a beautiful destination. San Donato does.
Meanwhile, at the Nook...
There isn't an enormous amount to report on the building itself this month. August was hot, the festas were in full swing and much of Italy appeared to have collectively decided that building work could wait until September. Progress was, accordingly, slow.
As we move towards autumn, the temperature is beginning to drop and everyone is gradually returning to work, so it is time for us to get back into our stride. Renovating a tiny old house in an Italian mountain village is already teaching us that imagination and enthusiasm are useful, but patience may prove to be the most important thing of all. We have plans, drawings, lists and schedules. San Donato, meanwhile, appears entirely untroubled by any of them.
Project Details
Location: San Donato Val di Comino, Lazio, Italy
Property: Historic stone village house
Project: The Nook
Key architectural feature: Traditional stone groin vault (cantina)
Focus: Slow restoration, thoughtful design and preserving traditional craftsmanship
The Nook Journal
The Nook Journal follows our restoration of a tiny historic stone house in San Donato Val di Comino, Italy. Through these journal entries we share the design decisions, craftsmanship, village life and small discoveries that come with bringing an old building back to life, one step at a time.
