Meet Casa Marcella

A family home, a new hospitality project, and a small place to stay in Tuscany.

I told you we would be back in September after a two-week break, and here we are. On Friday, we will officially return with two recipes I have been working on over the past few weeks, a distillation of summer and of the scents from my early morning walks.

But before we settle back into our usual rhythm, I wanted to tell you a little about what we have been working on behind the scenes over the past month, and how we actually spent this break. So, it is finally time to tell you about Casa Marcella.

We live on the second floor (or first floor in BE), while Casa Marcella is on the first floor (ground floor in BE)

Casa Marcella is our new hospitality project, joining the Juls’ Kitchen Studio and our cooking classes.

Starting next year, we will be renting out what used to be my grandmother Marcella’s apartment.

This farmhouse, where we still live today, was built one hundred years ago by my great-great-grandfather Tommaso. My great-grandparents, Piero and Pia, lived here, and later my grandparents, Marcella and Biagio. My dad was born and raised here, before moving into the house next door, converted from the old stables, where I was then born and raised.

I have told you before how hospitality is one of my superpowers, and how this deep instinct for welcoming people has always been rooted in my family. Now we will have one more way to put it into practice.

Casa Marcella grew out of the idea that hospitality could become a natural extension of what we already do with our cooking classes. You will be able to come and cook with us during the day and, at the end of the class, simply walk home.

August was a month full of dust, boxes taken to the recycling centre, plates and doilies carefully packed away, and memories resurfacing like the pale pink and green decorations we uncovered beneath the last coat of white plaster.

We emptied my grandmother’s apartment, not without a few emotional moments. It was the everyday objects, the ones that so often go almost unnoticed, the things you might put into a box without a second thought, that brought back the most overwhelming wave of memories: the pale aqua Pyrex teapot my grandmother used to make tea for us, the box grater with its yellowed handle, or the mustard yellow plastic napkin holder that Livia insisted on having on the table for her birthday.

A person’s life is held just as much in the most intimate memories we keep in our hearts as it is in photo albums, in the books they chose to keep, in the worn-smooth handle of a knife, in the crocheted curtains made to shield the house from the eyes of passers-by, in the rose and lavender scent of the little bars of soap in the bathroom.

While I carried on with the translation of Vegetables the Italian Way, Tommaso moved on to emptying the house of furniture, filling cracks, painting the walls, all with the aim of creating a fresh, bright space that we will slowly begin to fill again.

We decided to mix salvaged pieces, objects that have been softened by the patina of time in this house, and a few new things too. The dining table in the living room, for example, was bought second-hand and apparently came from a farmhouse near San Gimignano. We paired it with red chairs, also second-hand, to bring in a little colour and movement. The coat rack by the entrance, on the other hand, has always been there.

From the very beginning, our goal has been to preserve the feeling of a family home.

I spent endless summer afternoons here doing my homework or reading on the sofa, and for years we had lunch here every Thursday, when my grandmother invited us downstairs and set the table properly even though it was just an ordinary Thursday in an ordinary week, with nothing in particular to celebrate.

And yet, looking back, there was plenty to celebrate. It was simply a way of being together, chatting, and commenting on whatever was on the news. Even though we lived upstairs and saw each other all the time, it gave us one more reason to sit around the same table. And now I know that, in doing so, she was also giving us a memory that would stay with us forever.

Casa Marcella is your home away from home. Nestled in a lesser known part of Tuscany, it is ideal for those who want to spend a few days in the countryside exploring neighboring medieval towns, farms, hot springs, trekking trails, and good local restaurants.

Colle and Casole are just a few kilometres away, and in around half an hour you can reach Volterra, Chiusdino, Siena or Radicondoli. And if you feel like going further, you can be on the coast in under two hours.

At least to begin with, Casa Marcella will be designed mainly for two people: a small, self-contained apartment with a double bedroom, kitchen, living room, bathroom, and a little space in the garden. The bedroom will have a double bed, with the option of adding a travel cot for a small child, up to around three or four years old. Livia, of course, would be delighted to have a little playmate every now and then and she’s already planing which books and toys to share.

In the future we might add a sofa bed in the living room, but we want to start slowly and saw how things will work from here.

We hope that all the care we are putting into bringing voices, colour, and light back into this house will make it a place for people who appreciate the same simple things we do: people who find peace in a small table in the garden next to the lavender and rosemary bushes, and who would like to call a small apartment on the edge of a tiny Tuscan village home, even if only for a few days.

I’m not going to sell it to you as a picture-postcard village, because it isn’t.

And no, there isn’t a swimming pool either. I know that for some people this drastically lowers the “summer holiday in Tuscany” factor, but we would rather tell you straight away.

I have lived here all my life, and to me this is simply home. People leave early in the morning to go to work — mostly in town, not in the fields — children ride their bikes, neighbours trim their hedges at times when you might rather be resting, dogs bark, and at night you can hear owls and roe deer in the fields.

There is no shop where you can buy bread, and no pizza takeaway for those evenings when you are too tired to cook, but in August blackberries grow in the hedgerows along the road. We no longer sit outside on chairs chatting under the streetlight as we did in the 1980s; everyone tends to keep to themselves these days. But the sunsets are incredible in every season, and on autumn mornings the mist clings to the bare branches of the trees lining the ridge of the hill.

During your stay, we will be your neighbours. We will wave to each other from the window, and in the morning you will probably hear us telling Livia to hurry up or she will be late for school. If you are coming to Tuscany for one of our cooking classes, this really is the best place to stay: all you have to do is step outside, walk a few metres, and you will find the Juls’ Kitchen Studio ready to welcome you.

Next on our list are the bedroom and the kitchen and, knowing you, I am pretty sure this is one of the parts you are most curious about.

In the next few days we will choose the tiles for the kitchen, and then we will have to find the right kitchen itself. We are aiming for simple colours and clean lines, but the cooking teacher in me will inevitably take over when it is time to fill the cupboards. I try to imagine myself on holiday, and how I would want to use that kitchen: not to cook three-course meals, but to make simple, quick things. A two-zone induction hob and a small oven (or perhaps an air fryer?), a dishwasher, knives that actually cut, mixing bowls, spatulas, one or two good-quality pans, spices in the cupboards and fresh herbs just outside the kitchen.

Basically, even if all I am doing is frying an egg or throwing together a big salad, I would want the experience to feel pleasant, relaxed, and easy.

And then there is the garden: a small patch of grass, a hedge, a tree, and a view that, at sunset, stretches across fields and rolling hills.

This will be another little project of mine, approached very much as a beginner who loves experimenting and quite often makes questionable choices. I have already learnt which flowers and shrubs can survive our scorching summers and which ones cannot — trial and error is a good teacher — so over the next few months I will also tell you how this small side project is coming along.

Here, my goal is colour: hardy shrubs that attract bees and butterflies, and herbs you can use in the kitchen. No perfectly manicured English lawn or fancy garden furniture, but something more spontaneous, warm, and welcoming.

Now I’d love to ask for your help. Tell me if there is something that really makes you feel at home when you rent a house for a few days. It might be a thoughtful touch like a reading light beside the bed (this is essential to me) or a collection of cookbooks to inspire your dinners, or maybe something more practical like a good zester, a sharp knife, or an extra pillow.

Let me know in the comments, or reply to this email!

Casa Marcella will welcome its first guests in 2027, and we are planning to open bookings in January.

In the meantime, we have created a small website just for Casa Marcella. If you are thinking about a trip to Tuscany next year, you can leave your email there and you will be among the first to know when we open the calendar.

Between now and then, we will take you along with us as we choose the colour of the kitchen and the backsplash tiles, as we finish the bedroom and look for the softest sheets and the right pillows (firm? soft? perhaps both). I will take you into the garden too, and will probably share all my mistakes along the way. In other words, you will be with us as we put this house back together, one piece at a time.

So now you also know that when we are not in the studio teaching a cooking class, at the computer writing a recipe, or by the window photographing a particularly appetising dish, chances are we are downstairs with a paintbrush, a drill, or a rosemary cutting in our hands, getting Casa Marcella ready for its first guests.

And who knows, perhaps next year some of those guests will be you.

The view from Casa Marcella in Spring