Casa Maria Luigia: Massimo Bottura's Home Away From Home

You're taking Stradello Bonaghino in San Damaso, a small hamlet of Modena, trusting in the navigator's indications since there are no signs to reassure you that you are on the right track. The only one in evidence reads Acetaia Fabbi which is not your destination. Still, it makes you happy anyway because it confirms that you are in the heart of Emilia where balsamic vinegar that rests in the attics for decades once waited to become the dowry of new brides, where Parmigiano Reggiano is made from the white cows of Modena, and where the best Lambrusco is produced. 

You're headed to Casa Maria Luigia, the "home away from home" of Massimo Bottura, one of the world's best chefs, but you're not a gourmet and you're not going there for that. You're going there because you want to enjoy a special place, where you know you can breathe in the greenery of a large park and hear the birds singing or listen to what you fancy from the owner's collection of 8,000 records. You're going to wander through the dizziness of 50 scattered artworks, deciding whether to appreciate their beauty without delving into their history and meaning or whether to take a modern art intensive course. 

Actually, you're taking the contemporary version of a century-old vacation, when the nobles and wealthy spent their summers in a villa that was just a 30-minute carriage ride from their city. It's Giorgio Bassani's Giardino dei Finzi-Contini in the Ferrara of the 1920s with its private tennis court. It's the villa with a small lake and the "icehouse" where the snow was pressed to make the ice creams for the Berlinghieri, Emilia-Romagna's wealthy landowners in Novecento, Bernardo Bertolucci's 1976 film.

About a century later, in 2017, to be precise, that same idea of a villa, all brambly and fresh from various renovations and additions, stood before the eyes of Lara Gilmore and her husband, Massimo Bottura. Now, what can a contemporary art maniac come up with – now desperate because his house is overflowing with masterpieces, and therefore has no excuse to satisfy his compulsive need to buy new ones? Simple: buy a new house to fill. 

And what more could a girl from Washington transplanted to Modena – a copywriter for an art magazine and therefore responsible for starting that craze, as well as having "married a restaurant" – desire than large green space a few miles from home where she could multi-task a little less? Simple: buy that villa full of brambles and 100-year-old trees and transform it into a park of rustic delights. Above all, it's the chance of a lifetime for a couple who practice sustainable beauty and goodness, global respect, and "I don't waste" to create a concrete symbol of their life and work philosophy. 

Finally, last but essential, how to make such an aspiration economically reasonable? Less simple: transform it into a luxurious meeting place for those who have the desire, time (and money) to share it. Making the guest feel at home, but better.

Then, as chance would have it, everything matched: ML are the initials of Luigi Magelli, the former owner; ML are those of Maria Luigia, Bottura's mother; ML are those of Massimo and Lara. It took two years of creative-conservative restoration of the structures and the greenery, but now Casa Maria Luigia is there with its 12 (different) bedrooms; small rooms for reading, music, and spirits; a small kitchen stocked with different dishes prepared daily; and the carriage house that's been converted into an annex converted. All open onto the space that's equal parts backyard, vegetable garden, and agricultural field complete with a swimming pool and tennis court. 

Arriving, the culturally sophisticated guest smiles at the naivety of the driveway, a tiny road lined with willing saplings that strive to grow quickly, hoping one day to compete with the noble cypresses that characterize the Tuscan villas. But the hosts immediately warn us that we shouldn't take ourselves too seriously because neither do they. In fact, guests are welcomed by a creature covered in bronze scales (actually leaves), resembling something out of Guillermo del Toro's disturbing film The Shape of Water (2017). "It's Sandro Chia's Santa," Bottura explains, "who admonishes you not to forget tradition, otherwise - see the stick he's leaning on? - you'll get a cudgel from the past." 

Put in line, you look up at the vases on the second-floor balcony where, instead of geraniums, are two huge ceramic ice creams in the process of melting. "They are the Coppe Gelato by sculptor Giorgio di Palma," laughs Bottura, "I wanted them in classic flavors: chocolate and pistachio and fiordilatte and strawberry, and they are melting, warning us that nothing is forever." 

Enter, and the entrance is manned by a gendarme sculpture crushing a pink winged ceramic maiden under his heel. Golly, you think, this is a controversial stance against authoritarianism hardly suitable for those who come here to relax. Instead, it's Luigi Ontani's Herma of the Weapon, and the maiden "represents the tender and defenseless side that lives in the heart of the hardest individual," on request, explains Lara Gilmore, who knows every comma but would never come here to indoctrinate you. Her mission here is to make you feel relaxed and happy.

Vertigo from the oils, watercolors, ink drawings, lithographs, photos follow, and it's everywhere: in the rooms, on the stairs, in the kitchen, in the vinegar cellar, in the bedrooms. Mimmo Paladino, Joseph Beuys, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Wolfgang Tillmans ... with a choice so personal that one could try to imagine Bottura's temperament even without ever having seen him. All of this is punctuated by furnishings from the 1950s unearthed at auctions and flea markets, sumptuously brought back to life with velvets by Dedar and upholstery by Gucci. So you can ask for room number three to sleep with Andy Warhol's black and white Marilyn, go on a dreamlike journey with Enzo Cucchi's red camels in room number two, or change bed (and artist) every night for twelve nights.

But all this would be much less fascinating if there wasn't a park of secular oaks, a garden with 50 varieties of roses, an orchard, a swimming pool, a tennis court, a vegetable garden where (if you wish) to hoe, the "folly"( the little house secluded in the green) dear to the Anglo-Saxon tradition where you can read, meditate, or have tea. It's where you dream of going for the weekend during a sweltering summer day in the city. But for a human paradise to be complete, you also need delicious morsels, and Massimo Bottura is relentless in inventing ever new opportunities to excite the imagination and the palate. And if his Osteria Francescana is the spearhead of creativity in the kitchen and the Franceschetta is the easy formula, the old carriage house of Casa Maria Luigia houses long communal tables marked by 13 silkscreen prints of Damien Hirst's The Last Supper. The nine-course menu covers all the chef's classics: five ages of Parmigiano, the crispy part of lasagna, the eel that goes up the Po, all narrated live by Bottura, Lara, and Jessica Rosval. 

The latter arrived from Montreal seven years ago at La Francescana and is now a guarantee of the world's house style. For those who stay overnight, breakfast, on the same tables or in the garden, with hot focaccia from the oven, erbazzone (a savory tart), fried gnocco with mortadella, cotechino with zabaione, and sbrisolona is "that of the farmer. Without the brioches because they are not part of the Italian tradition," smiles Lara.

Get to know Casa Maria Luigia through the amazing brunch “Tòla Dòlza”, which means “take it easy” in Modenese dialect. Served every Sunday at 12 pm, the menu is excellent. Served in sequence: Almond and Lebanese cedar, smoke and leaves; Sweet potato and winter flavors; Zocca in rose; Bread, butter and...; A frittata in Emilia; Glazed pork belly and its chowder; Twice cooked short rib; Bitters; Tribute to the Demoiselles Tatin. Reservations online.