Michael & Sarah
The two people behind Casa Andrea — and how a lifelong love of Italy became a house.
My name is Michael. I didn't learn Italy — I inherited it. As a child I spent every summer on the Adriatic coast, near Rimini. My father was in love with the country; he handed down the language, the cooking and that love the way you pass on an inheritance. Later I studied in Rome — the eternal city has never left me. I work in finance, and nothing restores me like switching off and disappearing into open country, at the slow pace of the slow food movement I hold close.
Sarah, my wife, works in the world of luxury. She has the eye — the one that picks a beautiful Italian object out of a thousand, the iconic pieces of design she hunts down in the flea markets of Puglia. Our children all speak Italian: now it is my turn to pass the passion on to them.
How the idea came
Our first stay in Puglia was in 2021. I fell for the horizon, the sea everywhere present, the kindness of the people, the honesty of the produce. In 2022 we came back. One afternoon, driving, an Italian playlist in the background, the same thought crossed us both at the very same instant: we love this country, this region, so much — why not put down a project here?
A few phone calls later, a meeting with an architect, the visit to a building from the Kingdom of Naples — sixty square metres set on two hectares and a hundred centuries-old olive trees. Casa Andrea was born.
— Michael & Sarah