Why I like Umbria

I recently went to Italy looking for villas and liked Umbria a lot. I saw some of the nicest landscapes I had ever seen and ate certainly the best pasta (home made with wild boar, olive oil and black truffles for €6, ridiculous really).

The area is popular with holidaymakers from Rome, but not many people outside Italy know about it, meaning that the villas are relatively inexpensive to rent (compared with Tuscany at any rate!) Almost all the villas I saw in Umbria were converted farmhouses. In the old days the people would live upstairs and the animals downstairs so they always have a flight of steps leading to the first floor. Local planning laws in Umbria are that almost no new building is allowed and whatever is allowed must be in keeping with the red-brick and stone look of the traditional farm houses. Restoration of farmhouses is painstaking and often done very cleverly so that every inch is used to the best effect – not that space is really an issue here!