A Villa Overlooking The Vigolana

A few days earlier, I had received an unexpected inheritance, a bequest from a distant aunt, one of those relatives whom life keeps at the edges of memory and who, just when they seem to belong to the past, manage to leave behind something capable of changing the future.
So, together with my family, we had begun to dream big.
For years we had lived in our practical city apartment, comfortable, functional, even reassuring, but not poetic in the slightest. When the inheritance arrived, we realized that our idea of the future needed a few more square meters and, above all, a little sky.
It was my son who suggested the method.
He took a map of Trento and the surrounding area, spread it out on the kitchen table and established the rules: one of us would be blindfolded, would hold a pencil and let it fall onto the map. Wherever it landed, that was where we would look for a home.
Naturally, no one pointed out that, we could have relied on slightly more scientific criteria.
The pencil struck the back of the Vigolana. We looked at each other. It seemed like a sign. And at that moment, we wanted to believe in signs.
We were looking for a place away from the noise, a space that could truly become ours, where the days would have time to unfold and the seasons could enter through the windows.
That was how we arrived in Vattaro.
The first thing that struck me about the house was the greenery: a private space that seemed to embrace it, alternating between lawn and paved areas. And then there was the gazebo, a sort of room without walls, perfect for summer evenings, when the day stubbornly refuses to end, or for endless winter Sundays.
The house, built in 2014, was the result of careful and meticulous work by a local company, with solid concrete foundations and floors in eco-friendly wood.
On the ground floor, there were two garages, the laundry room, utility spaces, the hallway and the boiler room: all those things a house needs and that no one ever mentions when selling it, but which then become indispensable.
All you had to do, however, was climb the stairs, either inside or outside, to reach the light.
The living area was spacious and bright. The large eat-in kitchen seemed made for long dinners, the living room for conversations and the relaxation area for those hours when absolutely nothing is done, an activity that modern life unfairly considers unproductive.
And then there was the tiled stove: large, warm, reassuring, capable on cold days of embracing everyone like a blanket.
Every room had its own balcony, accessible through large windows that let the landscape in almost without asking permission.
Upstairs, wood took the place of brick and the whitewashed beams ran across the ceiling like branches of a tree . Four perfect bedrooms: one twin, two doubles and the master bedroom, with its en suite bathroom. A third bathroom completed the floor.
But it was above all the French doors that gave those rooms a special feeling. From each one, you stepped out onto a balcony beyond which lay the valley and the Vigolana.
But the surprises did not end there, we learned in fact that it was possible to build another little house in the garden, even the future for our children was already there.
While, embraced by my husband, I watched the sun sink behind the mountains and the cool air in my hair, the warmth filled my heart, I was finally home.