Antico casale between Todi and Perugia, Umbria

On the ground floor, a large living room opens around a wide fireplace, with the kitchen close by. Through the house, five bedrooms — including one in the original tower — sit under vaulted brick ceilings, alongside four bathrooms and two further sitting rooms, each with its own fireplace and small kitchen corner.

Outside, the land is what makes it. Four thousand square metres of garden, fully fenced, wrap around the house. There is a shaded porch for long lunches, an independent outbuilding, and — at the highest point of the property, bordered by a small olive grove — a 6 by 12 metre swimming pool with a stone annex housing a working wood-burning oven.

Rome sits about two and a half hours south by car. Florence, a little further north. The E45 is seven kilometres down the road, and Todi, Deruta, Perugia and Orvieto are all within an easy drive.