Gli Alberi di Fico — The Fig Trees

Six centenary fig trees stand on the masseria's land, their trunks thick with age and their roots older than anyone alive to remember planting them. They've outlasted owners, seasons, and reinventions of this property, and they remain one of its most generous gifts — fruit every summer, shade every afternoon, and a living link to whoever first put down roots here. These trees became the seed of something more: they're the inspiration behind A Fig in the Room, a book I'm working on that grew directly out of my time spent under their branches, thinking about what it means to restore a place like this one fig at a time.