Eight Years and Four Plots Later, a Crumbling Ruin in the Italian Alps Becomes a Hillside Haven

It was the late 1990s, and after years of cool and rainy summers in their native Germany—and a health scare—Barbara and Andreas Reuss decided they needed more sun. “I didn’t know how long I would live, so I wanted to fulfill my dream to have a house in the south,” says Barbara.

In 1998, the couple, now both retired lawyers, purchased a home in the small village of Tronzano, Italy, above Lake Maggiore. There, they spent summers enjoying the outdoors, taking long hikes, and swimming in the lake. Soon, Barbara’s health improved. Their two-bedroom house, named Casa Arturo, after their youngest grandson, was “our little holiday paradise,” says Barbara. That paradise came with an interesting view: a ruin of abandoned stables less than 100 feet away. Year after year, the couple watched as it fell “further into disrepair,” says Andreas, with the roof caving in, gaping holes for doors and windows, and old stones piling up along its sides.

In 2011, the couple learned that these ruins, which sit on protected land, would be subject to a new land use plan. “It included a regulation allowing old rustici close to the village to be rebuilt, even within the protected landscape area,” says Andreas. “We feared someone else might buy up the properties and develop them. So, we decided to do it ourselves.” Rehabbing the ruins into two separate, but connected, homes would give he and Barbara more space than they had at Casa Arturo, which would make it easier to host friends and family.

The land around the ruins the couple wanted to purchase included four separate plots with more than a dozen owners, so it took six years to persuade everyone to sell, and an additional two years to obtain a building permit. Fortunately, finding an architect was much easier. They tapped their son Mecky Reuss, of the Mexico City-based firm Pedro y Juana, and firm codirector Ana Paula Ruiz Galindo, for the project.