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<\/a><\/p>\n“Going in search of unusual villages, I recently happened to visit Borgo Spante, a town located a few kilometers from Orvieto in Umbria.
\nThe feeling as soon as you arrive after almost three kilometers of dirt road is that of entering a magical place, an unspoiled temporal space, a rural fabric that is still vital where you can learn about Umbrian history, nature and traditions. The village is the center of a centuries-old labyrinth where stories, paths and life tales intertwine. It seems that in ancient times there was an Etruscan settlement and that the name “Spante” in addition to having the meaning of “flat, basin, basin”, later, always at the time of the Etruscans, was also used to indicate the “basin or Lake Trasimeno”.
\nToday the hostess, Claudia, continues to live there and tell stories of her family’s past to her guests: an important, numerous and varied family whose lives are intertwined with the history of the territory and with the history of Italy over the last three centuries.<\/p>\n
The Spante estate was bought by Giandomenico Faina in 1752. It consisted of the Villa and 353 hectares of land. After obtaining the title of Counts of Civitella dei Conti, the history of the family sees its members occupying important public offices, marriages with noble families and purchases of property in Umbria, Tuscany and upper Lazio, so much so that a popular saying of the past.<\/p>\n
A prominent personality of the family was Eugenio Faina (1846\/1926) who worked alongside his father Claudio in the management of the Spante estates, assiduously taking an interest in archaeological campaigns and agrarian policy issues, finding solutions to increase production and improve the lives of farmers. In these lands he realized that it was essential to improve the life of the settlers and he renovated, enlarging them, the old farmhouses by equipping them with summer water and, first among the Umbrian owners, offered them a written contract. From an agricultural point of view, he increased the number of livestock, introduced the cultivation of vines and olive trees, planted woods with valuable trees such as chestnut and walnut trees, improving the quality of the oak groves making them grazable and created a company road plan that connected the two estates and the 58 farms. In 1906 he founded the International Institute of Agriculture in Rome, which was to become the first nucleus of what is now the FAO.<\/p>\n The lady of the house loves to tell stories next to the large fireplace always lit in winter in the beautiful dining room, and her arrival is always preceded by her deep and stentorian voice with a strange Umbrian-Tuscan accent and accompanied by her favorite dog. This place is the testimony that nothing is completely erased: it remains a world far away in time, but full of life, where illustrious characters, laborers, breeders and woodcutters have left traces of themselves at the crossroads of ancient Paths. Borgo Spante: un tuffo nel passato in punta di piedi.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\nAnd sometimes, on foggy evenings, it has happened to glimpse an austere figure with a habit and a hood sitting at the long table, or to feel touched by an invisible hand in a room of the noble palace, only to notice a man’s face smiling in the mirror. They are the presences of those who have passed through this village in mortal guise and then rejoined the universe, but leaving Spante, the House of Roots, an imprint of their memory.” (Donatella Arezzini)<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n