Earlier this week, we stayed in a hotel in Abruzzo, in central Italy, in the impossibly picturesque hill town of Santo Stefano di Sessanio. The town is at 4,100 feet elevation, and the views are incredible. The hotel itself is seriously rustic; in fact, it was designed as a historical experiment, an attempt to capture the look and feel of the past -- but with modern plumbing and (minimal) electricity. The hotel lodgings are spread out over a series of buildings in the town, restored to look as they did in, I would guess, about the 15th century.
The walls of our room were undressed stone, some of the windows had wooden shutters instead of glass panes, the "staircase" was a glorified ladder, and the furniture was rough-hewn wood. In fact, the overall effect was not that different from what my great-grandfather would have grown up with in a different nearby hill town, 150 years ago. One of my favorite places, though, is the Medieval tavern that serves as the hotel restaurant. It looks so authentic! It would have been great as a set for one of the roadside taverns in Game of Thrones. Even the menu tries to replicate Medieval fare, with a few nods to modern sensibilities (well, more than a few, in our case, since the staff put together an off-menu vegetarian plate for us).
The whole time we were there, I felt like I was time-traveling. I wish I could have brought some historical costumes to be photographed in.
A trip to the past, for dinner at a remarkably authentic Medieval pub in Abruzzo, Italy.
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