Saluti a tutti!

We left the UK with our two kids in 2018 to renovate our medieval palazzo in Abruzzo, Italy. We are Katja and Andrew and we bought this unique building - parts of which are 1200 years old and the newest part from the 16th century - in 2008, one year prior to the L'Aquila earthquake. Years later in 2020 we had the seismic structural work completed and are now still on our long rollercoaster ride of a journey to renovate and save Palazzo San Benedetto a cultural heritage monument.

You may have seen us on UKs Channel 4 programme Help! We Bought A Village. We also have a YouTube channel, (unfortunately not yet monetised) with regular updates as well as our Facebook and Instagram accounts which you can find using the tag @palazzosanbenedetto.

We plan to live in Palazzo San Benedetto and eventually run the premises as holiday apartments so that the income from this activity will go towards maintaining this magnificent piece of Italian history, (the equivalent of a UK Grade 1 listed building) for many people to enjoy it for decades, and even centuries to come. It would be impossible for us to maintain the building without it generating income for its upkeep.

Sadly we are way behind schedule due to bureaucracy and have also now been left without the finances to complete this project. Unfortunately since taking on this project, the funding previously available for restoration projects such as ours, was pulled by the Italian government out of the blue. Also, contrary to popular belief, we do not get paid to appear in the Help! We Bought A Village series.

We have now managed to complete The Terrace Apartment; one of five units we eventually want to complete. Originally we had planned on completing this unit as a holiday rental to generate income plus one further unit as our family home, but due to lack of funds we will be moving into The Terrace Apartment as this was the most developed part of the Palazzo and hence involved the least cost to complete. We are not looking forward to the costs of heating these large rooms in the winter and do not want to rely on doing so using gas. We have researched extensively and found a heating system that runs on waste wood materials (of which we have plenty here in Abruzzo) and whilst running this heating system is extremely economically efficient the initial outlay is not something we can or will ever be able to afford ourselves. If we are in a position of low utility costs (sadly we cannot reduce our electricity bills as we are not allowed to put solar panels on our huge roof because not only is the building cultural heritage, we are located in the historic centre; double whammy!) we will then be able to continue renovating the palazzo bit by bit.

Your support will help towards saving this unique palazzo, and will keep us motivated particularly with all the struggles we have already experienced, and are undoubtedly yet to encounter due to the huge amount of bureaucracy and legislation in place. Thank you so much.

For those of you who may have businesses and who would like to make larger donations by way of sponsorship of products please do contact us direct.