When first purchased, the building was in a sorry state.  It had been unoccupied for about 60 years and before that had been divided into small apartments for local farm workers.  The roof had been damaged in the earthquake of 1997 (which hit the headlines by damaging the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi).
The restoration work started in September 2005 and took 30 months!  However, the workmanship has been excellent and the results very worthwhile.

The original date of construction is a little vague. The architects believe that the oldest parts date from the early 1600s but extensions and changes have been made at various times since then.  The date on the stone by the front door is 1696 but a date found in the building across the courtyard of 1609 is more likely as the original date.  The 1696 date is probably when a major extensions were built.

The decorations on the walls had been painted over and were not at all apparent when we purchased the property.  They, like the painted ceilings, date from the middle part of the 1700s. The painted doors in the Nobile apartment, of soldiers in uniforms of the Nopoleonic times, had also been painted over (possibly for political reasons) and date from the end of the 1700s.

A little is known of the history of the building.  It was owned by the Travaglini family and in about 1750 a daughter of that family married a man from the equally noble Zacchei family, also with a base in Spoleto (an important city in those days and the capital of the Trasimeno region - larger than Umbria is today).  From this time it was known as the Palazzo Zacchei-Travaglini and continued to be the country residence for the family until 1914 when Count Carlo Zacchei-Travaglini died without having any heirs. The estate was left to the estate manager from whose son, Enrico Pellagalli, (then in his 80s) we purchased the property.