Willow Emporium

Name: Willow Emporium
Address: Cape Town, ZA
Telephone: 0722238046
Rating: 5

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Willow Emporium

Explore Italy with me. Exclusive, small group accompanied tours. E Mail: [email protected]
Mobile : 072 223 8046
(10)

Find Willow Emporium Italian inspired luxury home fragrance products at our stockists - see www.willowemporium.co.za for list of stockists or shop online.

09/07/2024

What do you do for fun on a rainy day?
I love doing the dishes - but only when they're antique Willow pattern platters.
There are more, but they don't fit on the table.
Somewhat obsessed 💙💙

04/07/2024

Come with me to Italy in October.
Love antiques, art, history, architecture and needing some 'la dolce vita'?
Send me a pvt message and let's chat about escaping to Tuscany, avoiding the crowds and seeing my favourite hidden gems.
Bring a friend (or two, max) on our teeny tiny mini tour, tailored for you.

21/04/2024

Morning stroll through roads barely wide enough for a horse and carriage.
Wisteria filling the air with its heady fragrance.
Springtime in Italy, before the summer crowds. Sublime.
Last photo is of the entrance to our rented apartment building.

21/04/2024

Treasure hunting at an Italian antiques market = pure bliss.

The setting fills the soul with joy. Wandering cobbled alleys between ancient churches and palazzos, marvelling at history, architecture and art, while sourcing that special piece.

Something for everyone - from jewellery, toys, tools, iron mongery, linen, china, copper, art to lighting and furniture.

16/04/2024

Bologna, street scenes including some of the many miles of porticoes.
Can't wait to explore more.

15/04/2024

Chiasso Barletti is a much photographed, 'Insta worthy' lane just behind San Michele church in Lucca.
It's also home to the cutest bookshop. Before you step inside .lucca, be sure to look up at the stunning facade of the building.
Do yourselves a favour and visit, you will be delighted.

20/01/2024

A few before and after photos.
Have been a tad busy with a renovation...😉
Walls came down to transform 3 pokey spaces (dark entrance hall, guest loo and kitchen) into one light and airy kitchen / dining area.

New floors, windows, doors, kitchen and everything transformed by a fabulous builder (who just happens to play lead guitar and sing like a rock star in a bluesy band). Ashy Heller of Home Build Construction. DM me for his contact details.

20/01/2024

Someone is slightly obsessed with white flowers, both inside and out.

18/01/2024

Hurry to the dahlia show, next door to .
Open tomorrow and Saturday.
My photos of the magical attic simply don't do it justice and there aren't enough superlatives to adequately describe it.
You have to see if for yourself.
Treat yourself to delicious croissants and coffee from .
flower shop opens very soon in this exquisite location.

12/01/2024

Swipe left for the more iconic view of the front of this chapel.
Planning our Spring 2024 trip to Tuscany.
More info to follow soon...

20/12/2023

Beginnings of the moonlight garden.
Have wanted an all white garden for the longest time. Love how white flowers look at night.
Inspired by with his exquisite terracotta pots filled with beautiful colour combinations.

15/08/2023

Buon Ferragosto. 15 August is a national holiday across Italy and everyone heads to the beach, a lake - somewhere to escape the heat.
Photos were taken on Sunday, my last day in Lucca.
First photo taken just moments before my taxi arrived.
Until next time, my beloved Italy xx

13/08/2023

Golden sands, crystalline waters and rose-tinted sunsets – Italy’s beaches are rightly known as some of the best in the Mediterranean. But do you have to pay to enjoy a day at the beach?

If you arrive at most parts of the coast in August, you’ll find your path blocked by a sea of umbrellas and beach chairs priced at anywhere between €10 and €50 a day.
If you want a free-to-access beach, you’ll usually have to walk some distance to a small patch of sand on the least attractive and accessible part of the shore; and in some parts of the country, the entire coastline is privatised.

Italy’s private beaches aren’t actually privately owned – they’re leased by the state to private operators under a concessions system.
But with licenses handed down without question from one generation to the next and little available in the way of any alternatives, as far as the average holidaymaker is concerned, they may as well be.

Fewer than half of the beaches on Italy’s roughly 8,000km of coastline are free to access, the environmental association Legambiente estimates in its newly published 2022 annual beaches report.

In regions such as Emilia Romagna, Campania and Liguria, approximately 70 percent of the beaches are privately run. In popular beach towns such as Riccione in the northeast, that figure rises as high as 90 percent; in nearby Gatteo, it’s 100.
“SOS free beaches”: the situation is an emergency, says Legambiente, whose members, along with those of the Mare Libero (‘Free Sea’) national campaigning network, have called on the Italian government to commit to making at least 60 percent of Italy’s beaches free to the public.

The coastline should be returned to the community, the organisation insists: the beach “must be made available to anyone who wants to enjoy it, regardless of their economic or social status, regardless of their origin and culture.”
Such a state of affairs would be “unthinkable” in nearby countries such as Spain, Greece or France, the report says, citing French laws that require 80 percent of beaches to be kept free of any man-made structures for six months out of the year.

So why is Italy the exception?
Seaside resorts have been around in Italy for at least a couple of centuries, and beach tourism was particularly popular in the fascist era (Mussolini was a particular fan of the seaside).

But beach clubs really exploded in the country’s post-war economic boom, and for many they represent the ‘dolce vita‘ lifestyle that characterised 1960’s Italy – making them actively prized by some Italians, and at least tolerated by others.
As the number of concessions granted has only expanded in recent decades, however – “in the last twenty years continuing at such a pace that in many towns it is now impossible to find a spot where you can freely lie down and sunbathe,” says Legambiente – there’s a general feeling that the situation has got out of hand.
In the early 2010’s lower wage earners hit by the recession complained they had been priced out of their area, as various Italian and foreign outlets reported a ‘class war’ on Italy’s beaches.

Under Italian law, the 5m stretch of beach directly in front of the sea is always free to the public, and clubs are legally required to display signs outside their premises indicating public access routes.

But many clubs simply ignore these rules, chasing away and threatening people who try to walk through their establishments without paying.
This led to a heated altercation in June when two Mare Libero activists challenged a club manager who had hidden his sign and refused to grant them entry. The encounter became so heated that police ultimately had to intervene.

The situation might, finally, be about to change: a new law approved by the Italian senate at the start of August is set to bring Italy in line with EU competition rules, requiring all beach concessions to be put up for public tender by 2024 at the latest.
More importantly, for those longing for free beaches, the law states that half of the beaches in each municipality must be free to access – having the potential to revolutionise seaside towns which are now under majority private control.
Whether the measure will actually be implemented by whichever government comes to power following Italy’s general election in September, however, remains to be seen.

the local.it

09/08/2023

How was your day? Let me tell you about mine.
Said sad farewell to the exquisite Italian riviera.
Returned to my beloved Lucca.
After delicious dinner, strolled home, pausing to play football with a few 20 something lads, in a piazza where Julius Caesar is believed to have held the First Triumvirate in 56 BC.
Passed Roman arches, well over 2000 years old, originally part of an ancient forum, now incorporated into a much 'newer' church.
Exhausting, I tell you.
Nite nite.

09/08/2023

You know you're in Italy when... the interior of the local bookshop looks like this.
Swoon worthy architectural detail.

08/08/2023

Intricate architectural detail and plaster moulding on these villas, some are genuine and some are 'trompe l' oeil' paint effects.
Can you see the difference?

Address

Cape Town

Telephone

0722238046

Website

http://www.willowemporium.co.za/

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