Since spring, FAI has inaugurated four important properties, symbols of Italy’s variety and richness. In November, the last inauguration of the fiftieth anniversary year will take place.

May 2025: Podere Lovara, Punta Mesco (SP) – Liguria

Thanks to an agreement with the Cinque Terre National Park, Podere Lovara, on the Punta Mesco promontory, is now an environmental education centre. Accessible only on foot along the path connecting Levanto and Monterosso, the property is located in an area of great scenic and cultural value and offers walkers a stopover in a typical rural house, refreshments with local products and an immersive video story dedicated to the history of the Ligurian landscape.

Podere Lovara is one of the FAI's most exemplary projects in its aim to save the Italian landscape, returning to take care of it, piece by piece, rescuing it from abandonment, especially in the inland and peripheral areas of the country, to restore it to its historical function and give it a new educational and recreational use.

Podere Lovara is, in fact, an experiment in energy self-sufficiency and zero environmental impact management.

May 2025: Garden of Villa Rezzola, Lerici (SP) – Liguria

Villa Rezzola is an ancient stately home surrounded by a large, lush, terraced garden, which is an extraordinary example of an early 20th-century English aristocratic residence, where the myth of holidaying in southern Europe takes shape in the harmonious interrelation between architecture and nature. The garden of Villa Rezzola is a typical English garden of the Riviera: a happy synthesis, unique in the world, between the spontaneity and luxuriance of the Italian Mediterranean landscape, made up of woods and cultivated terraces, and the variety and refinement of imported, exotic and tropical species. The result is an original garden, rich in species like a botanical garden, but as charming as a corner of the landscape, which seems spontaneous but is artfully constructed, where more formal spaces, like an Italian garden, with lawns, hedges, flower beds and avenues – including a 150-metre-long wisteria pergola – alternate with more informal spaces, where paths wind through the seemingly wild woods, dotted with water lilies, stairways and monumental belvederes overlooking glimpses of the landscape.

July 2025: Casino Mollo at 'I Giganti della Sila', Spezzano della Sila (CS) – Calabria

This summer, FAI opened the new spaces of Casino Mollo to the public, a 17th-century hunting lodge immersed in the landscape of the Sila National Park and a short distance from the Giganti di Fallistro Nature Reserve. The ground floor of Casino Mollo has been converted into a reception area with a shop, toilets and new educational tools. The rooms, simply redecorated in rustic style and equipped with a narrative system of panels retracing the long history of the place and its protagonists, enrich the current visitor experience of the Giganti di Fallistro Reserve and will be able to host educational workshops for schools and various cultural activities.

However, the work is not yet complete. This opening is, in fact, the first fundamental stage in a wider restoration and enhancement project, which will lead to the Casino being closed again in the autumn to reopen the construction site, with a view to completing the work and a new definitive inauguration in 2027.

September 2025: Monte Fontana Secca and Col de Spadaròt, Setteville (BL) – Veneto

Monte Fontana Secca and Col de Spadaròt is a mountain pasture on Monte Grappa, with four historic buildings and 150 hectares of pasture and woodland at an altitude of 1,600 metres, offering extraordinary views over the Veneto plain. Of the four historic buildings to be restored, the two main ones have been completed: the Stallone, which had been reduced to ruins, has been completely rebuilt using traditional techniques and materials and innovative technologies, and today is the centrepiece of the mountain pasture: no longer a stable, but a spacious, comfortable and self-sufficient building, designed for welcoming the public, hospitality, refreshments and education, which will open to visitors with all services next summer, in 2026. The former Casa del Malgaro or Casera di Valle is already open: a typical small mountain dwelling, now restored, but also redesigned for a new function, namely as a narrative space, through a video story created with immersive projections.

This place tells the story of alpine life and mountain traditions, but it is also a historical memory of the First World War, a meeting point between nature, culture and history.

November 2025: Case Montana, Giardino della Kolymbethra, Agrigento – Sicily

Work on the Case Montana is underway: after consolidating the rocky ridge on which the buildings stand, the first restoration work has been carried out on these typical rural buildings in the heart of the Valley of the Temples. The restoration work aims to restore the 'spirit of the place', recounting and enhancing its simple soul, linked to the agricultural traditions and domestic life of the sharecroppers who inhabited these houses for centuries. This is a particularly complex challenge, as the materials and structures of the buildings, severely compromised by decades of neglect, must be preserved with respect, while at the same time ensuring the necessary safety and adequate accessibility. In the restored rooms of the houses, visitors to the Giardino della Kolymbethra will be able to retrace the history of peasant life in the Valley of the Temples and enjoy the panorama and view of the Temple of the Dioscuri from the first-floor terrace and the courtyard belvedere overlooking the garden. Both outside and inside, the details speak of the simplicity of rural life: from the typical Sicilian terracotta roofs to the small restored oven, the cane ceilings and the carefully restored glazed terracotta and majolica floors.

Great attention is paid to environmental sustainability: rainwater, recovered from the roofs and underground chambers below, is collected and used to irrigate the surrounding land, and the houses do not have energy-intensive systems, in keeping with their simple, rural spirit.

An anniversary that looks to the future

On its 50th anniversary, FAI continues its journey with renewed energy: from Liguria to Sicily, from Calabria to the heart of the Alps, each restored property becomes a symbol of a collective commitment and a vision that combines memory, beauty and responsibility towards future generations.