The Luxury That Cannot Be Replicated: Daniele Kihlgren and Italy’s Rediscovered Villages

There are places in Italy where time has not stood still - it has simply settled. Stone villages, silent alleys, homes that still bear the marks of those who once lived in them. For decades, the world left them to their quiet.

Daniele Kihlgren did the opposite: he built, upon that quiet, one of the most studied hospitality models in the world.

A Philosopher Among Ruins

Kihlgren is not easily defined. Raised in Milan in a family of cement industrialists, with a degree in philosophy from Naples — a city he describes as “extreme” — his restless youth led him, almost by chance, to do something radically different from his upbringing: to acquire and restore to life what progress had abandoned.

His philosophical background is not a minor detail — it is the lens through which he interprets territory, heritage, and time. When he speaks of abandoned villages, he does not refer to real estate opportunities, but to collective identity, layered memory, and a form of beauty that the market has yet to fully understand or value — one he has chosen to preserve exactly as it is, with almost obsessive dedication.

Hospitality Without Scenography

The principle guiding every intervention is as precise as an axiom: the charm of a place is inversely proportional to the degree of urbanization it has undergone over the past century. Everything follows from this.

By acquiring abandoned houses one by one in Santo Stefano di Sessanio, in the Abruzzo Apennines, Kihlgren created Sextantio in 2004: one of the world’s first examples of “albergo diffuso,” and at the same time a philosophical and anthropological vision of what a village can become again. The name itself is ancient, referring to a Roman settlement located six miles from the nearest inhabited center, on the plateau where saffron still grows today.

To recover everyday objects and lived memories, Kihlgren worked with anthropologist Annunziata Taraschi, who interviewed elderly residents, recorded their stories, and explored their homes, cupboards, and memories, in collaboration with the Museo delle Genti d’Abruzzo in Pescara.

The result is a form of hospitality that resists any conventional classification.

Blankets are woven on traditional looms using wool from the Gran Sasso pastures, which also fills the mattresses. Light switches are made of ceramic. Beds, bedside tables, and chairs are all reclaimed. On the walls remain the blackened marks of fires once lit by farmers in homes without chimneys.

The only recognizable concession to modernity lies in the bathroom fixtures designed by Philippe Starck: white, essential, deliberately chosen because “they must be recognizable as alien elements.”

Among those who have sought this experience are King Albert of Belgium and Queen Paola, George Clooney, and Kiera Chaplin, granddaughter of Charlie Chaplin.

Not because Sextantio is luxurious in the conventional sense, but because it offers what conventional luxury can no longer guarantee: authenticity as a total condition, not a staged effect.

The Circle Closes at the Table

In November 2025, the Sextantio project reached a long-awaited milestone: the opening of Sextantio Cucina, completing twenty years of research into recipes passed down orally by local residents.

The kitchen is led by Dino Como, who, after fifteen years of training alongside Niko Romito at Reale in Castel di Sangro, chose to remain in his homeland to develop a personal language rooted in tradition yet speaking to the present.

A decision that perfectly reflects Kihlgren’s philosophy: not importing excellence from elsewhere, but recognizing and preserving it where it already exists.

The restaurant is located in a building under heritage protection, restored with the same rigorous approach as the hotel: large stone arches, a central fireplace, pre-20th-century tables and chairs, and ceramic tableware inspired by ethnographic research.

A Lesson for Those Who Know How to Listen

Kihlgren is not an entrepreneur in the conventional sense.

He is something more difficult to define: a man who chose to invest not in what the market already values, but in what the market has yet to learn to see. The line between cultural vision and investment strategy, in his case, has never been entirely clear. Perhaps this very ambiguity is the most profound lesson his work offers.

It is the same vision that guides Krhome in selecting properties: places with a story to tell, an identity to preserve, and a value that the market has not yet fully discovered.

Those who own such a property may hold an asset with still untapped potential.

Recognizing it — and translating it into a concrete strategy — is precisely what Krhome does every day, alongside those who have inherited history and wish to give it a future.