Last week, Germano and I found ourselves driving through the winding hills of Lazio on a tranquil Sunday afternoon. He mentioned that there was a beautiful convent in the nearby town of Celleno that had been transformed into a co-op hotel where he had once participated in a workshop called “Sensory Integration and its Role in Art Therapy.” I asked if we could go take a look and we decided to go check it out.
The Convento S. Giovanni Battista is perched upon a little hill in Celleno, a small town halfway between Orvieto and Viterbo. Built in 1610, the monastery was purchased by four families who created a co-operative in the 1980s and restored to its original simple beauty.
It now hosts a vast array of workshops and seminars from around the world, and has been so successful that they are booked out almost 2 years in advance by repeat customers. There are flower and vegetable gardens outside, simple rooms with beautiful views, a large dining room, a practice/workshop/performance space where the chapel used to be, and a tidy little breakfast bar.
The families who purchased and restored the convent say that they came together and were united around some common shared interests: political, social, spiritual, cultural and work-ethic sensibility and this quote on their website left me feeling hopeful that more collaborative endeavors of this nature can be created in the future:
“Il mondo e` nelle mani di coloro che hanno il coraggio di sognare e di correre il rischio di vivere i propri sogni.”
“The world is in the hands of those who have the courage to dream and run the risk of actually living their dreams.”
