Our house now has a name and a sign, Casa dei Benedetti, a fitting title

We’ve never had a house with a name before, but now we do. We were explaining to one of the Montecarlo shop owners where we lived, across from the bank, and he said, “Ah, la casa dei Benedetti.” We decided then that this would be its name. Cousins Frank and Annette, who are visiting from Gig Harbor for a week, brought us a hand-made wooden sign reading “Casa dei Benedetti,” which is now hanging in our living room.

It was once common for Italian country homes to have names, though I think city names not so often, unless it was a grand or historic home. I don’t think our house actually has a name, but it was probably built in the 1400s, since it is on the main street in the city. It is thought that all the homes on via Roma were built by the 1500s. Old maps show it to have originally be occupied by the Neri family. Also of interest to us, the same old maps show that just a few houses away was a house built by distant relatives, the Seghieri Bizzarri family.

However, we bought our house from the Benedetti family, four siblings about our age who grew up here, so some people still remember it as the house of the Benedetti. We like that name because it has a double meaning that we find very appropriate. Benedetti means “blessed,” and we certainly are.