It was a golden spring day when I arrived at Monteleone Castle. I had the privilege of spending a whole week there with Ginevra, my best friend since first grade, before her wedding was celebrated there.

The sun was filtering through the foliage of the trees, caressing the ancient walls of the fortress with a light that seemed suspended in time when I heard footsteps approaching, it was Mario, the manor’s caretaker and handyman.

Ginevra had told me a lot about him because not only was there a memory of when her family started working in the castle, but because Mario knew every stone and every flower, every corner and every story.
The castle stands elegantly at the top of the village of Monteleone: but its other properties are scattered like wildfire in the surrounding area, 300 hectares of tidy vineyards, fields perfumed with wild herbs, silent woods and meadows dotted with flowers.

Marco offers to accompany me and tell me about the manor, as he likes to call it, and our visit begins in the small church. He leads me inside and proudly shows me some of the splendid rooms, all beautifully maintained, those that, as Marco tells me, “have a history within history”, the large kitchen, the astronomy room, the library, the coat of arms room, the bedrooms, and outside, in the splendid Italian garden, the bell tower and the watch tower. Time passes quickly and the sun is already setting.

Today’s journey has been long and tiring and I ask permission to retire for a little rest. I climb the ancient stairs of the castle almost on tiptoe, guided by an inviting silence towards the room I have been assigned. I open a door ajar and find myself in a room with the scent of Cyrmol. The lit fireplace spreads an embracing warmth. I sit on a four-poster bed, covered with light veils and embroidered linen sheets. The lavender scent of the sheets envelops me, I close my eyes, perhaps only for a moment, and I am already asleep.

But that moment becomes a dream. In the dream I am here, but everything was different. The castle is alive with ladies and knights and torches lit along the corridors. The manor is a kingdom, and I… am the betrothed of the young prince of Monteleone. The skilful hands of two maidens help me dress, and I wear a marvellous and precious gown, woven of gold and silk threads, that sparkles with every breath I take. I walk through the vineyards as if they have always belonged to me, in the village I greet people who bow softly, as if they have known me all my life.

The laughter within the walls of the house not far away, the bonfires lit in the woods, the dancing among the ruins that seem, as if by magic, rebuilt and alive. And the prince? He looks at me as if I were the key to his happiness, and I feel suspended between dream and reality, between the present and a lost time.

Then, as often happens in dreams, time begins to slip away. I wake up slowly, still wrapped in the warmth of the fireplace. But the most incredible thing is to discover that I am really wearing the dress of the dream: gold and silk, sewn as if by ancient hands. I rise slowly, slowly, mirroring myself in the glass of a veiled window. The prince was no longer there, but something of him remained in my gaze.

My heart is still full of that other time, something of the dream has remained with me, like a secret whispered between the stones of the castle.

These days everything seems incredible to me, I hear the faint echo of a love that perhaps was, or perhaps will be but this castle is and will remain my heart’s place.