Travel Back in Time at These Eight Historic Airbnb Homes
From Steinbeck’s studio to a restored lighthouse, these storied spaces provide an inside look at a bygone era.
One of the best ways to get a deep sense of a destination is to explore the areas’s oldest and most interesting sites. Even better? Stay in one. Here are eight uniquely historic Airbnb homes that offer a portal to the past.
18th-Century Château in Poligné, France
Photographs by Alexis Armanet
When Laure Berthélémé bought this château in 1989, it was in total shambles. The previous owner died young and childless during World War I, so his castle sat uninhabited for 75 years. There were holes in the roof and trees growing indoors. Thieves had stripped the house of its valuables, including fireplace mantels and floorboards. The amount of TLC it would take to bring the château back to life was astronomical — but that only made Laure, a collector of 17th-century French art and paintings, more determined to buy it.
“I thought, I have to do something to save it!” she says. Located 20 miles from Rennes, the château had been listed as a French historical monument in 1972. The current manor was built in the 18th century, around the time of the reign of King Louis XIV, and was once owned by the Count of Bourdonnaye-Montluc. An original dovecote stands at the entrance of the property. In the count’s day, the size of the pigeon tower broadcast the landowner’s wealth and status. The count ruled three to four villages at the time, or roughly 12,000 acres. The manor also housed a bakery, another centuries-old relic of privilege and greed. (Back then, only lords and clergymen typically owned ovens; the peasants just worked them.)
“When we first saw the castle, it was in bad condition, but the size and shape are beautiful. We have to preserve the French heritage.”
— Laure Berthélémé, Host
Two other structures predated the count’s château. The earliest one, a wood-and-stone building erected by the Raguenel family, was built in the 12th century to defend against invasions by French, British, and Viking aggressors. (Brittany was an independent nation then.) A second structure, also built for defense, stood on the property in the 15th and 16th centuries. Archaeologists have identified some feudal ruins on the grounds, and stone from the second iteration can be spotted in the corridors of the current château.
Today Laure shares the now-just-ten-acre estate with her 25-year-old daughter, Airbnb host Nolwenn. Though she was born after Laure acquired the property, Nolwenn is just as impressed with its history and architecture. She particularly loves the château’s crest of two lions, sculpted on a pediment made by Ange-Jacques Gabriel, principal architect of King Louis XV. All of the spaces — four living rooms, five bedrooms, and five baths — are furnished with antiques, including stiff-backed chairs and short beds. “Some items are more about the beauty than comfort,” admits Laure. “But we did add a swimming pool to make things attractive for modern people.”
Steinbeck’s Studio in Pacific Grove, California
Photographs by Julia Stotz
These small, boxcar-style cottages may look humble, but they once belonged to a literary giant: In 1941, American author John Steinbeck used 425 Eardley as his home and writing studio. The address changed hands several times until a developer bought it in the 1980s and planned to raze the buildings. When the townspeople protested, the houses were spared.
“Our home draws die-hard fans. One recently sent us photos of his Steinbeck tattoos with the note, ‘I can’t wait to stay here!’”
— Kevin Delaney, Superhost
Superhosts Kevin and Vicky Delaney, who work for tech companies in the Bay Area, purchased the cottages in 2013. They learned the property was close to Cannery Row in Monterey, where Steinbeck’s friend Ed Ricketts ran Pacific Biological Laboratories. While Steinbeck was living in the house, he and Ricketts collaborated on drafts that would become The Log from the Sea of Cortez.
Despite his professional success, Steinbeck’s personal life was a mess when he lived here. His marriage to his first wife, Carol Henning, was falling apart, and he’d taken a mistress, Gwyn Conger. When digging into Conger’s My Life with John Steinbeck, Kevin discovered that a soap opera had unfolded in what was now his living room. “[Conger] alleges that in 1941, Steinbeck sat her down with Henning and told them both: ‘Whichever of you ladies needs me the most and wants me the most, then that’s the woman I’m going to have,’” says the Superhost.
The Delaneys preserved many of the architectural details, including the handcarved birds on the fireplace and the five-foot-nine doorways. Kevin recalls that, in one of Steinbeck’s letters, the author invited his editor to stay, noting that the house was a great place to get some serious thinking done. “So we kept it simple on purpose. There’s a couch, there’s a chair, there’s reading, there’s writing, and there’s talking,” says Kevin. “It’s truly a getaway.”
Restored Lighthouse in Koromačno, Croatia
Photographs by Christian Kain
For more than a century, lighthouse keepers lived in relative isolation at Crna Punta (“black point”). The beacon was built by the Croatian government in 1873 on the eastern side of the Istrian Peninsula; its job was to guide ships through the Kvarner gulf.
Life for the keeper remained static until the 1980s, when lighthouses started to become automated. With no duties to attend to, the keeper moved on — and Crna Punta sat empty for three decades. Along came Airbnb Superhosts Tijana and Slaven Maretić in 2014. Amazingly, this wasn’t the couple’s first lighthouse. That would be the formerly crumbling Marlera lighthouse in Medulin, about an hour south, which they rebuilt nearly from scratch in 2012. “We are lovers of old buildings,” says Tijana. During the renovation (much of which they did themselves), they worked sunrise to sunset for eight months, hauling tools in an SUV down a treacherous dirt road. “We had a million broken tires and a stuck tractor,” she recalls.
Looking at the four-bedroom, two-story lighthouse today, you’d never know the struggle. There are old wooden beams, stone steps, and a pellet stove for heat. The lantern was relocated from a concrete post at the front of the lighthouse to a second-floor tower, and it’s still active, shining two flashes every ten seconds.
Tijana relishes the isolation of Crna Punta. It has sweeping views of the Adriatic Sea, plus a private beach with regular dolphin sightings. Guests are equally smitten — to the extreme. “They fight over who has to go to the market to pick up the bread,” she says, laughing. “I tell people to stop for it on their way here, so nobody has to leave!”
Former Abbey in Fort Augustus, Scotland
Photographs by India Hobson
Lots of people consider their house a sacred space, but Andreas Peter’s home actually is built on what was once hallowed ground. His one-bedroom, two-story apartment in a former abbey was once a monastery’s private writing room, where visiting monks could be found copying texts by hand. It still features the original stone arches, pillars, and tile in the vestibule. “Don’t be surprised to find a gargoyle gazing down on you,” says the Superhost.
“If you have something special, you need to teach others about it so that they understand the history of the ground they are touching.”
— Andreas Peter, Superhost
The property was first a fortress, built in response to Scottish-English tensions, and the abbey was founded in 1876 by the Order of Saint Benedict. The Catholic monks built their monastery and, later, an all-boys boarding school, atop the fort’s bastions. “Local villagers remember the school bells ringing and the church bells calling for high services,” says Peter. Legend also has it that a Loch Ness Monster sighting took place on the grounds.
When the school was shuttered, in 1993, the monastery lost its main source of income, and the abbey struggled to survive. Ten years later, developers took over, carving the deconsecrated abbey estate into about 100 luxury apartments. They preserved the cloisters and tower, along with original features like and Gothic doors. Peter and his partner, Kris Plewicki, purchased two detached flats that formerly made up the Scriptorium. Among the amenities are a human-size chess set in the garden, a croquet lawn, and a cricket pitch, but Andreas also encourages guests to just stroll along the silent cloisters after dusk, when nobody else is around. “It feels like a movie set,” he marvels. “Very special indeed.”
Wartime Train Car in Maryville, Tennessee
Photographs by Chris Mottalini
Dean Smith’s first thought when he spotted the rusting train car parked in the front yard of the house he and his wife, Adrienne, were thinking of buying was, “Wow. It’s like the lawn ornament from hell.” Adrienne, however, had a vision.
Platform 1346 began its life in 1943 as a kitchen car for U.S. troop trains carrying soldiers to the coasts during World War II. When the war ended, the mobile kitchen was mothballed until the Cold War, when it was pulled out of storage and retrofitted with computers and sophisticated radios. It went on to serve as a flight simulator for the Strategic Air Command.
The train car was retired again in the 1980s and sat in a military rail yard in Florida until 2005, when an air force colonel snapped it up at a surplus auction. In 2016, the colonel sold the train car — along with his house, an airplane hangar, and six acres of land at the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains — to the Smith family.
The gut renovation took nearly nine months. One of the main features the couple retained was the upper mounting racks for four 300-gallon water tanks. Steel plating near the bathroom once served as shielding to protect the outside of the car from the heat of the engine. They also kept most of the original wood planking for the floor.
“When we bought the train, it was a rusting hulk. Now we get guests who get googly-eyed when they walk in.”
— Dean Smith, Host
Even with a new interior, the Smiths tried to make things as period-relevant as possible by incorporating shiplap, a claw-footed bathtub, and a retro-style Haier refrigerator. They also hung photos of the train being transported across Tennessee — a feat that entailed a 100,000-ton crane and 100 feet of track that the colonel had laid himself. When the Smiths finally wrapped up the project, they sent before-and-after photos to the colonel. “He’s not a man of much emotion,” says Dean, “but he thought it was really, really neat.”
Storied Tea Estate in Elkaduwa, Sri Lanka
Photographs by Mahesh Shantaram
Built on a knoll, with waterfalls and sweeping views of the Matale valley, David Swannell’s 1930s tea estate is enchantingly scenic. That’s due, in part, to custom: Planters back then would choose spots with the best vistas for their bungalows, so long as they also had good water sources.
“People who stay with us get a feel for how life was 70 years ago.”
— David Swannell, Host
Mahatenne (Sinhala for “great place”) was originally about 3,000 acres and kept under British ownership until the ’50s. In the ’70s, the Sri Lankan government nationalized estate land, allowing a maximum of 50 acres per person. This made Mahatenne unprofitable, and it changed hands several more times before Swannell bought it in 2004.
The host wasn’t always a tea grower; he spent more than a decade as an investment banker in London before discovering this was his calling. His renovation unexpectedly uncovered brickwork that showed arches, so he restored those arches and kept other original features, like the cast-iron stove (now a bar). By the end of 2004, Swannell reopened the working tea estate as a bed-and-breakfast with a new name: Ashburnham.
These days, the tea grower employs about 30 workers, many of whom are descended from generations of tea pickers. Guests can hike, explore the tea fields with the estate manager, and have a tea tasting at the house. Those kinds of experiences transcend money. In 2013, David received an offer from a royal Middle Eastern family to buy his land. “I wasn’t keen on selling, but it was a stratospheric price,” he says. Members of the royal entourage visited Ashburnham six times. The estate was one of two on their short list, and in the end, Swannell says, “fortunately they chose the other one.”
Converted Water Mill in Lulemino, Poland
Photographs by Aurelien Chauvaud
Twelve years ago, Karina and Michal Grocholski bought a run-down water mill with no plumbing or electricity because, says Michal, they “saw beauty in the old ruin.” What they couldn’t have seen at the time was the incredible artifact their renovation would unearth. Hidden in the attic floor was a diary dating back to the late 19th or early 20th century. It was written in an old German dialect that the villagers spoke prior to World War II, when the region was still part of Germany. (Back then, the village of Lulemino was bustling; it had a school, a church, and 300 residents. All that remained was the water mill and about 30 houses.)
As they completed the reno — keeping original walls, doors, and stairs intact — the couple tried to find someone to translate the diary. But even native German speakers struggled to decipher the arcane language. It remained unread as the Grocholskis added central heating, a home cinema, and fiber-optic internet, and put the home on Airbnb — until serendipitously, in May 2016, an Australian guest of German heritage booked the mill when she was visiting a neighboring village where her mother had lived 80 years earlier. “It turned out Elisabeth was both an archivist and fluent in that particular dialect,” says Michal. The guest translated 68 pages of the diary, explaining that it had been written by the daughter of the mill owner, Emma. She had kept the diary from ages 12 to 14. Some passages described her day-to-day life, and others included school lessons. Says Karina, “It’s valuable proof that this was a unique, happy place.”
And it still is. The mill is bordered by woods and river, with no neighbors in sight, yet it sits just 20 miles from the Baltic Sea and two hours from Gdańsk. Guests come to hike and canoe, and to relax in the 13,000-square-foot vegetable and flower garden. Says Michal, “When you sit in the garden and you see how much we’ve done here, it’s just astonishing.”
Ancient Cave Dwelling in Matera, Basilicata, Italy
Photographs by Salva López
When you’re wandering the steep streets of the Sassi di Matera, ducking into cafés and galleries built inside former cave dwellings, it’s hard to imagine that just 70 years ago, this cinematic district was the scourge of Italy. Matera in Basilicata is one of the oldest towns in the world, with evidence of human life stretching back at least 7,000 years. The Sassi di Matera, in particular, is a district known for its warren of ancient cave dwellings. These were first occupied in the Neolithic era; by the 19th century, destitute farmers, shepherds, and artisans had taken up residence. When people needed more living space, they tunneled deeper into the calcareous stone. By the 1940s and ’50s, there was still no plumbing or electricity .
“This used to be a land of nobody. I think of the history of the people, digging the rock to gain some room…. For me, it’s something exceptional.”
— Francesco Catucci, Superhost
National attention was brought to the extreme poverty of the area in 1945, when political exile Carlo Levi published his memoir, Christ Stopped at Eboli, about his year spent in Basilicata. The government forced an evacuation, moving 15,000 residents to new state-built housing. Some were grateful for the improved conditions, but most were devastated by the relocation. The caves sat abandoned for decades. Things started to change in the late ’80s and ’90s. Preservationists, artists, and hoteliers got involved, and in 1993, the Sassi di Matera was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
In 2010, history lovers Francesco Catucci and Cinzia Latronico bought one of the old cave compounds in Sassi’s Casalnuovo neighborhood, moved their family of four into the upper unit, and converted the ground-floor cave into a guesthouse. They hooked up plumbing and electricity and replaced the broken terracotta floor with modern concrete. The rehabbed cave has a private entrance, TV, Wi-Fi, bathroom, kitchenette, and patio. The former cellar is now a “relaxation room,” where guests can slip into a deep bathtub, stare up at the cave ceiling, and “imagine the thousands of years it took nature to make this stone,” says Catucci, who once had a previous inhabitant show up at his door. The woman, in her early 80s, was joined by her son, a conductor. She explained that she had grown up in the cave, and that it had been in her family for generations. “We felt lucky to meet them,” says Catucci. “It was clear she was proud of her son. He was a symbol of redemption for the hard life she’d had to suffer.”
About the author: Ashlea Halpern is the co-founder of Minnevangelist and editor-at-large for AFAR Media. She edited New York Magazine’s pop-up travel blog, The Urbanist, and writes regularly for Airbnb Magazine, Condé Nast Traveler, Bon Appétit, and Artful Living. After spending almost four years traveling Asia, Australia, the Arctic, and North America, she settled in Minneapolis, MN — the most underrated city in the lower 48, bar none. Follow her adventures on Instagram at @ashleahalpern and @minnevangelist.
