Norbou and I had been looking for a ruin to bring back to life for years, something with real stone walls. Most of what we found never felt right. Then we stood in this one, one bare room above the water on the wild side of Filicudi, and knew within the hour it was the one.
The shell itself was rebuilt from a ruin back in 2013: walls up, roof on, and then left exactly like that for over a decade. No water, no electricity, not even a toilet. We bought it in 2025, in the same unfinished state it had waited in all that time.
Over three months, working side by side, we ran the water and the power, built the bathroom, furnished the room, and painted and decorated it, turning a decade-old shell into the home we'd been picturing for years. It still feels a little like the dream it started as.
