“There are days when we don’t yet know our life is about to change.”

It was the first of May, 2002. We had arrived in Sicily almost by chance: Carlo, Cica – our Caribbean dog – and me. We weren’t looking for a house. We were looking for a place to start over.

It was orange-blossom season. The air smelled of citrus flowers, and everything seemed to slow down. We had a paper map resting on our knees: that’s how you traveled back then, following the roads, your instinct, and your curiosity.

That day we decided to explore the Iblean plateau. We came down toward the valley, passed through Villa Vela, and arrived in Noto, a town we didn’t know at all.

We entered along Corso Vittorio Emanuele and found ourselves facing extraordinary beauty: the churches, the baroque palaces, the golden stone in the sunlight. But what struck me most was the atmosphere. This wasn’t the lively, well-visited Noto that so many know today. It felt suspended in time, magnificent and silent, waiting to come back to life.

I still remember Carlo stopping to take it all in, in silence. Then he simply said: “This is the place.”

I still had many questions. He had already seen a possibility.

We kept walking until we reached Via Nicolaci, the street of the famous baroque balconies. Right there, Carlo noticed a small sign: old, faded by the sun, almost invisible. It bore a single word: FOR RENT.

We called immediately. The following week we came back to Noto and signed the contract for that space. Around the same time, we also found a small house with a garden in Villa Vela, perfect for us and for Cica.

Within a week we had found a home, an office, and, without knowing it, the place that would change the course of our lives.

Looking back on that moment today, one thing strikes me: that sign had probably been there for months, maybe years. Many people must have walked past it without noticing. Carlo, instead, immediately saw what it could become.

It was one of his greatest gifts: recognizing the hidden potential in things before it became obvious to anyone else.

At the time, I thought we were simply choosing an office. Today I know that small, faded sign was pointing us toward something far bigger than a rental space. It was pointing us toward a direction.

That was also where I began to look at places with a wider gaze: not only for what they were in that moment, but for what they could become.

And sometimes, it’s exactly a small intuition like that one which ends up changing an entire life.