PROPERTYFINDER
Here’s a rare find: a 12th-century farmhouse with many of its original features intact, including massive fireplaces, beamed ceilings and cobbled floors. When this house was built, China was in the Song Dynasty and at war with Manchuria, while Europeans were launching crusades to the Holy Land. A home for enjoying this 14-bedroom Tuscan farmhouse is 12 kilometres from the medieval city of Pienza (a Unesco World Heritage site) in Val d’orcia. Featuring four reception rooms, it would also make a great place for entertaining. In addition to the garden, which can be illuminated at night, there is a swimming pool, an outside dining area, a loggia with expansive countryside views and a home cinema. The house can be divided into four sets of interconnected apartments for separate use when guests come to stay; there’s also an additional guest apartment in the secondary accommodation. Yet another advantage of having self-contained apartments is that some or all of them can be rented out during the summer high season. Another type of good life can be enjoyed at this property too: the getting-close-to-nature kind, because it has cypresses, fig trees and rose bushes growing on its 1.4 hectares of grounds, as well as 60 olive trees that provide an opportunity for enterprising owners to make their own olive oil.