How to survive the summer heat in the countryside, and other small acts of care.
Villa Sidoli-Rossi, in Albinea (Reggio Emilia), known today as Il Borgo del Balsamico, is a historic residence dating back to the 1700s.
Summers are hot, even more so in recent years, and that's true everywhere in the world. We cool our rooms with ceiling fans and standing fans. Simply being in the countryside already helps bring some relief.
We're constantly looking for non-invasive, low-environmental-impact solutions.
We don't have air conditioning, and some guests notice it: that's perfectly understandable. These are legitimate observations, and we want to answer them just as clearly, not with a convenient excuse, but by genuinely explaining why things are this way.
One reason is a legal constraint: both the landscape and the architecture — exterior and interior alike, are protected (Article 21, paragraph 4 of Legislative Decree 42/2004, as amended). Yes, our home is subject to cultural heritage protection. Installing air conditioning in a building like this is no simple undertaking.
The house has lived through three centuries of history, and it's the very same villa that, in March 1945, was the setting for Operation Tombola, one of the most well-known episodes of the Resistance in the Reggio Emilia area.
But even where it would technically be possible (and it isn't everywhere), we remain unconvinced about air conditioning. It's a technology that solves one problem by shifting it elsewhere: it cools the inside by pushing heat outside, and it consumes a great deal of energy. It's a contradiction we know well, and as a business immersed in nature, we don't want to feed it without real need.
This is a lived-in place, not just a postcard.
For us, the Borgo isn't simply a beautiful backdrop for staging a noble kind of life. It's the place where we grew up: as children, the countryside was our playground.
Growing up here meant learning, almost without realizing it, the rhythms of a place: coolness arrives with the evening, not at the push of a button. We throw open the large windows when it's cool out, and close them before the heat arrives, the thick walls are good at holding a steady temperature.
The hospitality we offer
Our guests are a varied mix of people: families, couples, curious travelers passing through, lovers of balsamic vinegar and history, coming from all corners of the world. But they share one thing in common: respect for this land, for its beauty, and for the choices made to protect both.
We try to welcome everyone with an almost familial warmth, because in the end, this is the place where we truly live. That is our greatest luxury.
Many of you, among our regular guests, already know this and choose us precisely for it. But those who see us from afar, perhaps finding us online without ever having visited Albinea, may form a different idea and arrive with expectations they won't find here. When that happens, it saddens us a little: we would have preferred that choice to be clear from the very start, not discovered after the bags are already unpacked.
Preserving harmony and authenticity is, for us, one of the essential rules of opening our home to the people who come to visit us.
