Some stories begin with intention, with years of searching, planning, preparing.
Ours did not.
Our story began with an email.
A simple message from an old subscription — the kind that arrives quietly in your inbox, the kind you delete without thinking. But for reasons we still cannot fully explain, this time we clicked. One small, instinctive decision… and there it was. A villa in Tuscany. Weathered. Abandoned. Sleeping beneath centuries of history.
We were in Canada at the time. Tuscany was an ocean, a continent, a life away.
We were not actively looking to buy a home.
We were dreamers — yes — but practical ones.
Our plan had always been 5 to 7 years from now.
One day we would open a retreat. One day we would create a place of beauty, rest, and stories. And we even knew its name: Villa Amore.
A dream so vivid it lived in our conversations long before it lived in the world.
But this villa…
This villa felt like an invitation.
So we listened.
And we booked flights.
From Canada to Florence — not to purchase, not to commit — but simply to see.
To stand before the dream and understand why it had stirred something in us.
When we arrived at the property, nothing prepared us for the way our hearts shifted.
The gates opened, and the garden welcomed us with that soft Tuscan light — the kind that settles over olive trees like a blessing. The villa rose before us, marked by age, by silence, by years of being forgotten… and yet, beautiful beyond explanation.
It felt familiar.
It felt like coming home to a place we had never lived.
It felt like Villa Amore — the Villa Amore we had imagined only in dreams.
But the moment we knew happened deeper in the garden.
We were walking through an overgrown path — branches tangled, statues half-hidden, time resting heavy on every stone. And somehow, as if guided, Giorgio wandered to a far corner beyond the fallen trunks and thick brush. He kept going, drawn by something neither of us could see.
There, covered in rust, nearly swallowed by vines, was a sign.
Via dell’Amore.
The Road of Love.
It stopped us both.
A message from another time.
A whisper from the land itself.
A confirmation that the dream we held for so long had finally found its form.
We looked at each other — no words needed.
In that instant, we knew:
We were not choosing the villa.
The villa had chosen us.
And so began the story of Villa Amore — not with a plan, not with a search, but with a single email, an open heart, and the courage to follow where love was already waiting.
