Our story
Hi! We are Paolo and Valentina, Artù and Lara (the ones with the paws). Dimidium is us and our desire to get to know and meet new people, share this piece of Emilia, what it has to offer and the values it holds. We look forward to welcoming you here among these hills so that you can bring home even a small piece of it. Come and visit us!
Dimidium is more than a bed&breakfast in Emilia-Romagna. It is the meeting point of our paths, our way of conceiving life and human relations, the synthesis of what we have always been and what life has put in front of us.
Dimidium is a simple, quick to pronounce, harmonious Latin word. Its literal translation is “half,” and it inspired us first of all because it can represent us and our story.
And by playing with words a bit, we found a further and deeper meaning: Dimidium is the first real destination along our paths, which started from different places and met right here, in a place that has become an essential stage of a journey yet to be made.
Emilians by adoption (beyond what you’ll find on our IDs), citizens of this world almost unknowingly, we were born and raised in the countryside, amidst the sounds of tractors pulling the earth in summer and making their way through the snow in winter. All around, the unmistakable scent of walls warming in the sun, the hum of bees, the pleasant feeling of the wind rising in the evening to cool the air.
Paolo, a thousand lives and many jobs before doing what he always wanted to do: going to the mountains with his dog, being a guide and telling people how simple it is to fall in love with what surrounds us every day.
Born in Emilia, raised in Liguria and back in the plain after his teenage years, he is constantly on the move, always on his way to those peaks that attract him so much.
From here now, far from the gray of the city, he is able to catch a glimpse of their unmistakable profile, soothing himself.
Valentina, born and raised in the hills of Cesare Pavese, mixes in her blood Piedmont, Liguria, Romagna, the story of a great-grandfather who traveled in the early 1900s to discover what the world was like in California, and a grandfather who dreamed of opening a hotel by the sea.
Absorbed by the hectic pace of Milan for seven years, in this corner of Emilia she found the meeting point between what runs through her veins – the chirping of cicadas, the scent of wheat, the smell of the air heralding snow – and all that is yet to be discovered.
In her drawer she has a manuscript to finish and books with rough pages marked in pencil.
Artù and Lara are the canine members of our family, two shepherd mixes very different from each other. Artù is a shy, cuddle- and run-loving teenager: he is wary and rather mama’s boy; when you arrive, he may pop out of the window to observe you.
Lara arrived in our family on the threshold of twelve: don’t let her age and slouching movements fool you, she can still be the life of the party (and more importantly, a good fork).
Artù and Lara are members of our family, which is why you might hear them barking or see them chasing a ball around the yard.
This is Dimidium: a meeting place, the perfect destination in between a life that flows with its incessant rhythms and the never-quenched desire to bring back to the mind and body moments and sensations that can really scan the sense of time.