Umbria, where the farm is located, is known as the green heart of Italy; beautiful and comparatively unspoilt with its rolling hills and myriad hilltop towns. Here, more than in many other regions, visitors can feel the locality’s distinctive culture and unique connection with past that goes back beyond the Romans, their republic and subsequent empire, to the Etruscans: a time which acknowledged individuality, when women had respect and power, and where people appreciated life as it was lived and experienced rather than as a search for ideals.