Self catering apartments in Capena, Italy

We seek to encourage the local community of artists (of which there are many) by only hanging local art-works in the houses and commissioning special pieces. We provide information for visitors on where they can buy the artists' work. We support the local community in a general way by encouraging our visitors to use local shops and restaurants. Not content with the maps provided, we have drawn our own map of the area and we provide a guide to the local shops and reviews of the restaurants so visitors can make an informed decision about where to eat.

Apart from general practical information about the area and the village, including directions, we also provide visitors with other information about the village's history and its culinary and artistic heritage. The entire Sabine Hills area is reputed to produce the best olive oil in Italy due to its low acidity and we emphasise this to our guests and tell them about local olive oil trails. We are constantly seeking out new local attractions, preferably off the beaten track and produce a sheet of suggestions for our visitors. We strongly encourage visitors to use local transport if possible. We provide detailed instructions on the best way to reach the village by public transport and otherwise lay on a taxi service so that guests can avoid the need to rent a car.

Casa Galilei, our larger property, was a completely derelict corner of the Renaissance monastery built on the site of the village's medieval fortress before we restored it. Formerly the monastery guest quarters, it had been uninhabited for nearly two centuries and used to house chickens and a mule. Caves at the back of the property date back to the Etruscan settlement that predated the medieval and renaissance buildings. The building was restored by a local master builder, Mimmo, who was born in the village and is completely familiar with the local materials and building styles after a long apprenticeship with his father. He and his brother Comilvio worked non-stop for 18 months to restore the building expertly using exactly the materials that would have been used originally, i.e. hand-fired terracotta tiles, specially imported from Tuscany laid in exactly the pattern that would have been used for this type of dwelling, and colossal chestnut beams that had to be manhandled into place using a winch and pulley system much as the monastery's original builders must have done. The original room plan has been left exactly as it was. Light is funnelled into the two windowless rooms that are inside the monastery building from the brightly lit outer rooms by a clever system of skylights and openings in the walls.

We regularly host a team of archaeologists in Casa Galilei. We were proud to welcome Dr Roman Roth and his team of archaeologists from Cambridge University to Casa Galilei. Dr Roth and his team have started to excavate the ancient site of Capena, about 3km out of the present town centre. Because the property had been left derelict for so long, there had been some unsightly dumping at the top of what should be an unspoilt valley behind the house. We paid to remove much of the rubbish ourselves and also lobbied the health authorities in Rome and the local town hall to do something about it. We have secured an agreement from the Mayor that within the year we will be allowed to look after the upkeep of the communal land around the back of the house.

We will not overcome years and years of neglect and self-interested development of this wonderful historical site overnight and it is sometimes a delicate juggling task to call for change while still maintaining good relations with the local community. We are helped, though, by the fact that the village has been awarded funding to restore the historical centre and work on this massive project is well underway, with a new drainage and sewage system installed to replace the ancient system of leaky pipes, new cobbles and - best of all - a car park below the old square so that the area will soon be traffic-free.

We try to minimise energy use by using energy efficient light bulbs and the most energy efficient household appliances. We also have showers and half-flush toilets and we change sheets and towels once a week. The walls of Casa Galilei, our larger property are 3 feet thick and provide wonderful insulation, meaning we do not need air conditioning or fans in summer and hardly any heating in winter (though we do have gas-fired central heating). We recycle using the local bins, though this does not amount to a lot as we are a small-scale operation. We have established contact with the River Tiber nature conservation project in Nazzano, a nearby village and encourage our visitors to take the opportunity of a bird-watching river trip down an unspoilt stretch of the Tiber, coupled with lunch at the organic restaurant in the reserve with the added bonus of wild boar spotting!

We run a paper-free operation as far as possible and conduct all bookings and administration via the internet as far as possible. The British end of We are run by Juliet out of a garden office in Twickenham to avoid transport pollution and Pucci, who runs the Italian side, also works from her home just 20 yards from Casa Galilei and a short work away from Casa Marconi and the Anatra Grassa restaurant. Both our houses are equipped with broadband internet and, through Juliet's links with the Society of Authors, we try to promote them as out of season retreats for writers or other types of teleworker. We give our guests information about local conservation, in particular informing them of local rubbish and recycling arrangements and of local bylaws about when they should dispose of their rubbish and about making noise late at night and so on.

The houses are owned and administered by Juliet, who lives in England most of the year but has a long association with Capena, having lived there for a few years more than 20 years ago and now a very regular visitor. The properties are run from day to day by her friend Pucci, who has lived in the village for many years with her teenage boys and is a much-loved and respected member of the local community. Pucci speaks English and is also wonderful and infinitely patient with our guests, sometimes taking them on days out, inviting them for meals in her own home, introducing them to the locals and generally making them feel part of the local community.

Capena, like most of Italy, now has a large and hard-working Romanian community who are now free to live and work in the country since the EU enlargement became effective at the beginning of 2008. Our Romanian cleaner Lumi lives right next door to Casa Galilei and is responsible for cleaning both the houses and bossing us about in the nicest possible way. She and her Romanian husband Mariano (a builder who has also worked for us) originally lived alone having been forced by circumstances to leave their small boy, Cosmin, in Romania with his granny. But now, in a heart-warming happy ending, he has at last been able to joined his parents and started school in Capena last September.

Casa Galilei and Casa Marconi are both newly restored properties but despite this, it is amazing how many odd jobs need doing all the time. Stefano, our odd job man and friend is a little bit special because he can turn his hand to anything from mending a leaky pipe to fixing the internet and is frequently called upon to do both. He is particularly appreciated for his willingness to help out at the drop of a hat even in the evening or at weekends. But then again, he only lives around the corner. Curse Capena – our cookery course venture in conjunction with the Anita Grass restaurant - also uses only locally sourced produce that is organic where possible. Giovanni, the chef at the restaurant seeks out local producers, who are often unaware of the merits of their produce. The village is particularly famed for its chickpeas and sucking pigs, for example.