Eventually she got over it and embraced the signature as part of the house’s history. If you look closely at the mural, you can see in the water reflection (bottom left) where one of the Italian contractors thought it would be funny to sign his name. Perhaps they were unearthed from the garden.īelow, we get a look at the dining room with the amazing wall fresco that was discovered during the first renovation: The books and bric-a-brack are lovely but what is it with the disembodied vintage doll parts? These interior photos show what the house looks like now. House Crazy Sarah wanted to know what the inside of the real Bramsole looked like so she embarked on a quest to find the few precious photos available on the internet which showed the interior of the actual house the Mayes so lovingly restored.Īfter her original wave of fame, Frances published several more books, the proceeds of which allowed her to do another renovation of Bramasole in 2015. House Crazy Sarah recently finished re-reading the book and fell in love with the house all over again.īramasole looks mysteriously down on us, and we remember the first time we saw it, when I stepped through weeds taller than I, and said, jokingly, “This is it.” The real Bramasole that Frances Mayes wrote about in her gorgeous memoir Under the Tuscan Sun, is much larger than the movie version, and has more of a terraced yard as it it perched high on a hillside.

The movie featured a place called Villa Laura, which was lovely in its own right, but not the actual house. It’s important to note that the movie version of the house is not the real Bramasole. Or, perhaps you are like House Crazy Sarah and read the book first and was captivated with Mayes’ vivid descriptions of the 200-year old farmhouse she and her husband Ed bought and rehabbed from ruins. Are you one of the many who fell in love with Frances Mayes’ Italian Villa in the 2003 movie Under The Tuscan Sun?

Frances and ed mayes