Living in the village

Places

Sextantio

Place
Santo Stefano di Sessanio, Italy
Official site
sextantio.it
Themes
Mountain, Heritage reinvented

In Abruzzo, Sextantio’s hotel has no building: its rooms are spread across the restored houses of a medieval village, next to homes where residents still live. An albergo diffuso born of a simple idea: save a village by living in it again, without building anything new.

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Living in the village

Daniele Kihlgren discovered Santo Stefano di Sessanio in 1999. He came to own about a quarter of it and reached an agreement with the local authorities: €4.5 million invested in restoration, in exchange for a ban on any new construction. Conservation is governed by agreements with the municipality and the National Park.

Salvaged materials, hidden wiring, Abruzzo mountain furniture, blankets woven on wooden looms, wool mattresses: the interiors draw on photographs taken in the 1920s by the linguist Paul Scheuermeier. Around thirty rooms, for a group that comes to understand what preserving a territory means.

Photo credits : Gabriele Battimelli, Magda Ehlers, Alessandro Cesarano (Pexels) ; Luca Basili, Rich Martello, Angelo Casto (Unsplash)

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