I have always believed that a house is part of the journey.
Perhaps this is because, over the years, I have travelled quite a lot — both for work and for pleasure. And somehow, wherever I went, I found myself paying particular attention to the places where I stayed.
For work, I was often surrounded by high standards of hospitality. I learned to notice the details: the way a room feels when you first walk in, the little things that make a stay effortless, the care behind an apparently simple gesture.
But my travels for pleasure were different.
I was rarely looking for the most perfect or prestigious place. I was drawn to houses with something to say. A particular history, an unusual detail, an old piece of furniture, a beautiful garden, a family story. Places with character.
Sometimes the house itself became one of the memories of the journey.
And so did the people I met there.
Over the years, I have stayed in many different homes, in very different parts of the world. Some were elegant, some wonderfully imperfect, some full of stories. What they had in common was that they gave me a glimpse into a place that I could never have experienced by simply staying in a hotel.
They allowed me, even briefly, to enter someone else’s world.
This has probably shaped the way I welcome people today.
When I opened Casa del Grillo to guests, I did not want to create a place where people simply came to sleep. I wanted to share a house that had already lived a life — a family house, passed down through generations, filled with memories, objects, stories and small traces of the people who have loved it.
And I wanted to share something else too: my way of seeing a place.
For me, travelling is not only about seeing what is beautiful. It is about noticing.
The bakery where local people still go in the morning. The particular way a village sounds at dusk. A family-run vineyard. A small restaurant that tells you more about the region than any guidebook. A conversation that unexpectedly stays with you.
It is about understanding, even for a few days, how a place lives.
I know this way of travelling may not be for everyone.
But perhaps it is for you.
If you are the kind of traveller who is curious about the story behind a house, who prefers a small village to a resort, who enjoys discovering a place through its people, food, landscape and everyday rituals, then you may understand why Casa del Grillo means so much to me.
After many years of travelling, these are some of the things I would now like to give back to my guests.
Not simply a place to stay.
But a little way into the life of a place.