Villa Lina

Way back when, in the 80's, I spent a few days at the Villa Lina, a ramshackle estate located somewhere to the north of Rome near the Lago di Vico in the heart of Etruria. Only an hour or so from Umbria and Tuscany this place was the summer headquarters of renowned architect Robert Mangurian and his entourage (mainly architecture students from top architecture schools)who stayed there while measuring Hadrian's Villa. It was a pretty groovy scene set over a period of several summers. Each year new students arrived and Robert and his girlfriend Marianne set them different tasks....
The bedrooms while far from luxurious had in some cases retained beautiful architectural details and the odd antique armoire here and there or maybe a wrought iron bed. Overall though it spoke of student hostel especially the attic I slept in with 5 other people,beds sharing floor space with bicycle parts and oil cans.
One of the best things about being there was meal times. Two local women came in to cook for the group and they were unbelievably talented and easy going...seemingly effortlessly they threw together huge platters of grilled meat(rabbit,sausage, quail) along with gleaming grilled eggplants sott'olio,zucchini with fragrant mint, artichoke hearts, stuffed tomatoes and zucchini blossoms,fantastic salads using local greens that I had never seen before that had no equivalent in English and bread straight from wood fire ovens of local bakers. Every meal came with pasta and the array of sauces was endless....
Well, since those days I had rarely given the Villa a thought..until last week...I received an email from an old friend (we had met there in 198...?).The email was titled "Remember?" and a link was attached......so I went there immediately and wow!!!it is pretty amazing. The link to the Villa Lina site is on the left hand side of my blog towards the bottom....see what you think.