In 1924 Iris and Antonio Origo—an Anglo-American heiress and an Italian marchese—purchased La Foce, a vast Italian estate with a half-ruined, 15th-century villa at its core. Located in the Val d’Orcia, a spectacularly wild and desolate valley in southern Tuscany, the restoration of the estate became Iris and Antonio’s lifetime project.

Fired by a profound impulse to make a difference to others, the couple set about making social and agricultural changes in a forgotten corner of Tuscany. They dedicated their lives to transforming an impoverished terrain into a thriving landscape of wheat fields, olive groves, and vineyards. With English architect Cecil Pinsent, they refurbished the house and designed an elegant, terraced garden with box hedges, a rose garden, fountains, and a wisteria-covered pergola.

The Val d’Orcia’s landscape is now a world-famous example of the harmony that can exist between man and nature. In 2004 UNESCO included it in the list of World Heritage Sites. As Iris and Antonio’s land reclamation and social projects advanced at headlong pace in the 1920s and 1930s, so did their restoration of the villa and the creation of a wondrous garden, destined to become one of the most beautiful in Italy and to play an important role during World War II. Katia Lysy, granddaughter of Iris and Antonio Origo, tells an enthralling story of love, war, and rebirth, all documented by new and old photographs from the Origo family archives.

Sponsored by Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation.

Katia Lysy was born in Rome and has worked in publishing, journalism, Italian television, and as a literary translator from English and French into Italian. In 2016 she edited an unpublished pre-war diary, A Chill in the Air, by her grandmother, Iris Origo. In 2024 La Foce: Paradise in Tuscany, Katia’s book on her ancestral home, was published to great acclaim. In 2010 Katia moved to the Val d’Orcia to manage La Foce.