I believe the act of hosting is a bit like traveling, backwards. I have traveled a lot in my life: for study, for passion, for humanitarian projects. I also won a trip around the planet! Now, it's the world that comes into my house. I've always been thinking that my house was too big for me and that I wanted to "share" it. Some issues in my previous carrier gave me the opportunity to start the Portico Rosso project. The name recalls the medieval area and all its arcades and the red is the color of the façade of my house, brick red. It was not my intention to open a B&B at first. But just open my home exactly as it was, with the antique furniture owned by my family, home accents coming from my various journeys around the world or that I found in antiques' and flea markets. What I like the most about my new activity is hospitality and taking care of the house, of the things in it, of the people I host. We all are so much in need of some piece and calmness. I remember a guest one day writing in my Guests' Book that "taking care of a place, of a relationship, being together is an act of culture par excellence". And I believe this comment is a wonderful recap of my goal. Take the rooms, for example. I called them by the name of the people who booked them for the first time, when I didn't have any review or rating yet. Theirs was an act of real trust that I wanted to reciprocate somehow. So my Mexican angel Diana gave her name to the double room overlooking the garden. Simon unintentionally pushed me to open the other double room and she was constantly looking after my escalation on Tripadvisor (from the last all the way up to the 1st place in the whole district and in the city center and certificates of excellence every year since the opining back in 2014.).
Lucia
