Marta and Oscar Fisch Revive a 400-Year-Old Farmhouse in Tuscany

This article originally appeared in the September 2009 issue of Architectural Digest.

The moment you arrive in the Val di Chiana, in southern Tuscany, you know you are standing on ancient land. You sense it even before you visit the valley's extraordinary prehistoric caves or discover the wealth of Etruscan antiquities that are still regularly dug up here. And then you see how one great civilization after another has molded the contours of this land to give its horizon its timeless feel.

This was the landscape that a family of cultivated yet adventurous Americans was looking for, though they didn't know it before they found it. Based in New York, Marta and Oscar Fisch—together with their adult daughter, Alina, and son, Martin—started making house-hunting forays into the Italian countryside every summer. "We found this gorgeouscastellocompletely cut off from the outside world," says Alina Fisch. "We nearly fell for it, but there was nothing, absolutely nothing, nearby. So we decided that as well as looking like heaven on earth, our dream house had to be near a town with nice cafés and at least one English-language newspaper."

The family sallied forth and visited no fewer than 60 properties until they came across what could have been described as the ideal Tuscan farmhouse—if you turned a blind eye to the crumbling walls, caved-in roof and junglelike vegetation, some of which had crept indoors. "But the views were breathtaking!" Marta Fisch offers brightly. "We stood there, completely captivated, surrounded by cypresses and olive and fig trees, looking out at these extraordinary medieval towns dotted all over the horizon. It was so magical, I don't think any of us actually even wanted to think about the problems of taking on such a ruin."

Both Marta and Oscar Fisch were trained as architects in their native Argentina, so what might have appalled less experienced eyes did not faze them very much. What they didn't know was that the only way of getting work done on the property at all involved contacting and employing a byzantine network of local administrators and professionals.

"We needed permission step by step from the local authorities," she explains. "And only a local man could get that for us! But once we'd found the right architect and builder, things did begin to move."

The Fisches produced the designs for a complete restoration of the 400-year-old farmhouse. They put their first-floor kitchen where farmers would have kept livestock. "That was very common in the countryside," says Marta Fisch. "The animals produced heat for the upstairs rooms."

Martin Fisch has a particular love of books, so he had the idea of transforming the tower of the house (originally used for drying the farm's tobacco crop) into a double-height library and media room, with the first floor serving as a guest room. The Fisches tend the farm's ancient olive groves so successfully that they maintain a steady supply of olive oil. Not content with producing only one staple, Oscar Fisch has turned his attention to the neglected vineyard and hopes to bottle a homegrown vintage to grace the kitchen table.

That table, which seats 12 people, was made especially for the house. "We do a lot of entertaining right through the summer months," Marta Fisch says. "It's a very pleasant, relaxed lifestyle—and so peaceful that in the morning you see hares and pheasants and sometimes even small deer wandering through the fields. We feel so at home here," she concludes with a radiant smile, "that we're thinking of coming out in the winter. And if everything goes to plan, we'll soon be able to warm up on our own wine!"