On a balmy summer evening in the late 1990s, Daniel Elow Kilhgren, a young philosophy graduate of Italian-Swedish descent, took a trip on his motorcycle among the mountains and valleys of the Gran Sasso-Monti della Laga National Park in the heart of Abruzzo. He suddenly came upon the little village of S. Stefano in Sessanio and the discovery changed his life.

Couched on a rocky outcrop 1,250m above sea level, the village was once an important crossroads between Rome and the Adriatic. Governed by the powerful Medici family of Florence, it had also been a prosperous manufacturing centre for carfagna, a rough black wool used for making monks' habits and soldiers' uniforms.