The Medici family bought this fortified wool-trading village on the slopes of Gran Sasso in the sixteenth century, and their coat of arms still marks the entrance gate. It nearly emptied out over the following centuries, down to around 70 residents by the 1990s, until 1994, when entrepreneur Daniele Kihlgren began restoring its stone houses one by one as an albergo diffuso, a hotel scattered through the existing village fabric rather than concentrated in one building, without erasing the worn textures that made the place feel intact.
The 2009 L'Aquila earthquake brought down the medieval Torre Medicea, the tower that had long served as the village's emblem, along with the roof and facade of a Baroque church, but Santo Stefano has since rebuilt without losing the stone lanes and low doorways that survived. Terraced fields below still grow the tiny, prized lentils that give the village its September harvest festival.
