Photography by Simon McBride
The Italian Job
May 1, 2002
Close your eyes. Imagine your ideal country house. Rolling hills and fields of sunflowers unfold below you as you sample the bountiful local produce and wine. Throw in some culture in the form of Renaissance art and Romanesque churches, and you aren’t inhabiting a Merchant Ivory movie, you are in Umbria, the lesser-known, lesser-populated neighbor of Tuscany and the eternally seductive yardstick against which all country house locales are measured.; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc(); "The Minchillis' guest bedroom.")
At the epicenter of country house charm is Todi, which first popped up on the international property radar about a decade ago. Academic researchers at the University of Kentucky declared the small medieval hill town worthy of inclusion on its list of “the world’s most sustainable cities.” Headlines from Los Angeles to Tokyo soon proclaimed Todi the most livable city in the world. (Click image to enlarge)
Part of the town’s appeal lies in its location. Todi, about 70 miles north of Rome, is ideal for weekend retreats from the capital and is an easy drive after a transatlantic flight. Despite all the media attention, it remains a walled medieval town perched on a hill, with a stone-paved piazza, flanked by church and town hall, at its heart. While Todi is untouched in terms of its fabric, it has its cosmopolitan side. The annual Todi Festival hosts avant-garde music, dance and film productions. An antiques fair takes place every spring.
For many Italians in the know, of course, Todi had long since been “discovered.” Americans, myself included, have been visiting the town since the 1970s. My first trip with my father, New York art dealer Joseph Helman, was to visit Beverly and Bill Pepper, who had bid at a local auction for their very own castle. Beverly, an internationally known sculptor, and Bill, a journalist, had decided to put down roots. Among their many houseguests who followed suit, restoring and moving into converted farmhouses, were art historian Barbara Rose, art dealer Janie C. Lee, artist Al Held, screenwriter Jay Presson Allen and her Broadway producer husband Lewis Allen, and former Yale president Benno Schmidt and his then-wife, filmmaker Helen Whitney. So many of the Peppers’ friends bought houses that for a while the area was known as Beverly’s Hills.
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