Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/1543537
F or David Hocker and his wife, Gisela Borghi, restoring a 13th-century palazzo in Lucignano, Italy, marked a deliberate downshift, from a work- driven life in Texas to the more leisurely pace of a Tuscan hill town. In Lucignano, cars are restricted from the historic center, and the narrow stone streets encourage an easy, walkable routine. Home to roughly 400 residents, the village is laid out in a tight oval spiral — small enough, Borghi notes, that "you can walk the whole loop in 12 minutes." Born in Argentina and raised in Italy, she has a deep connection to the town: Her father was born there, and her mother and grandmother still live within its ancient walls. Hocker first came to Tuscany in 1999 as a Texas A&M University student, studying at the Santa Chiara Study Center in Castiglion Fiorentino. There, he met Borghi, who was working at a local music bar. The two later married and built a life together in Dallas, returning to the region often and, as Borghi has said, "always looking for a way back"— ultimately, a place in Lucignano to call their own. That opportunity arrived in 2020, when they put an offer on a palazzo that had sat empty for decades, its rooms closed off and largely untouched since the early 20th century. Over the next four years — with an inevitable pause during the pandemic — they worked steadily to restore its original integrity, returning the house to everyday use. Today, it is fully integrated into their lives. Hocker travels back and forth from Dallas, where he continues to run his landscape architecture practice, while Borghi lives there full time, running her shop next door, Ora et Labora, Latin for "pray and work." Lucignano has a long tradition of ceramics and ironwork, a legacy that informs the town's artisanal culture. In that spirit, the store carries jewelry, clothing, artisanal food goods, antiques, and housewares made by craftspeople in the surrounding area. At street level, the palazzo faces a narrow stone lane, flanked by a small butcher shop. In back, the kitchen opens directly onto a vicolo, barely wide enough for two people to pass, the paving worn smooth by centuries of footsteps. By early evening, the kitchen door is already swung back against the ancient masonry, releasing the redolent smells of the region: garlic warming in olive oil, a sauce slowly simmering for pici (the thick, hand-rolled pasta traditional to this part of Tuscany), and meaty wild mushrooms foraged from the surrounding oak, chestnut, and pine forests. The Val di Chiana, the broad agricultural valley stretching between southern Tuscany and Umbria, remains distinctly rural, a landscape shaped by farmland and woodland, where wild game has long been part of the local cuisine; on some nights, Hocker roasts a wild boar over the fire. It's a rhythm Borghi contrasts with life Front doors of the 13th-century palazzo, framed by a carved stone surround, with an architect's or mason's caliper above. 58