Welcome travellers!
Hello, I’m Claudia, from the italian Emilia-Romagna region, but in love with Liguria, owner and manager of the Terrazza con l’Ulivo Guesthouse.
Having always lived in Modena, together with my husband, but tired of city life – end of 2014 we started looking for a place in Eastern Liguria, where we can plant new roots. That’s the story of how it went.
The story of our house
After many months of searching in the Gulf of Poets, from Lerici to Portovenere, we discovered an old abandoned farmhouse located on the hills of Cadimare, a hamlet of La Spezia, with a sea view that took our breath away. It was for us like love at first sight: within 1 hour from the first visit we had already made a purchase offer.
We had no doubts: this would be the right place for us to start a new life.
Starting from April 2015, when we purchased the property, the long renovation process began. Not only the house, but also the surrounding land and the olive grove were in urgent need of care after decades of neglect. It took us 6 years to renovate the house, the dry stone walls, restore the olive trees to health, build new terraces.
We managed to turn an old ruin into an idyllic place. A stone house, in traditional Ligurian style, with an extraordinary view of the Gulf of Poets and the Apuan Alps, surrounded by a large flower garden and a terraced land with about one hundred olive trees.
Now we live here in Liguria almost permanently, especially during summer.
Why we decided to become hosts
We are passionate travelers too, often staying in private homes accomodations, especially when located in extraordinary contexts, rather than in hotels. We have always loved this kind of accomodation, we don’t like hotels and resorts. So at a certain point we wished to become hosts ourselves, to welcome visitors and travellers from all around the world.
Therefore in spring 2021 we decided to renovate the house’s ground floor too, in order to create a new space to welcome guests.
Thus we realized a room with private bathroom and independent entrance from a terrace which has the particularity of having a flowerbed with an olive tree in the center. This is the reason for the name of the newborn Guesthouse: “The Terrace with the Olive Tree”.
We created this accommodation thinking about what we always liked to find when we are on vacation ourselves: comfort, independence, a beautiful view, without being in an isolated place.
Therefore we can’t wait to start sharing this view and this relaxing and idyllic place with friends and guests too! If you don’t speak Italian don’t worry: we speak English and German, and a little French too.
P.S. Pictured is also our cat Gelsomino, who enjoyed running around the garden so much, unfortunately he crossed the rainbow bridge almost 3 years ago.