Check Out This 300-year-old Roof

By Cass Jacoby.  

Sitting within seven acres of California’s Silicon Valley is a piece of old Italy — literally. 

Estimated at $23 million, the Mediterranean-style villa located at 30 Trail Lane in Woodside, California, pans 7,956 square feet. According to The Sacramento Bee, many of its architectural elements were actually imported from Italy, including the 300-year-old, hand-selected terracotta tiles on the roof. 

“Most of those gorgeous barrel tiles on all the roofs are more than 300 years old and were shipped — very carefully — in the containers from Italy,” Michael Dreyfus, the listing agent with Golden Gate Sotheby’s International Realty, told Robb Report. “The thin brick tiles in some of the bedrooms were reclaimed from the floor of an old Italian church.” 

The owners traveled to Italy and brought home 25 shipping containers filled with pieces they hand-selected for use on the property, according to the listing. 

It’s no surprise the 300-year-old roofing material has continued to protect the home, clay tile has one of the longest life expectancies among historic roofing materials, according to nps.gov. 

Clay is a natural material first used on roofs in China. Heritage Tiles claims in their history of clay tiles that the first clay tile roofs were installed during the Neolithic period, about 12,000 years ago. It is widely speculated that the fire-retardant nature of clay, was a critical reason for this roof material’s early, widespread adoption. Ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans all used clay roof tiles. 

Barrel clay tiles (also known, in the U.S.A as Mission roof tiles) are the vast majority of installations throughout Italy, according to nationalbuildingarts.org. These installations call for two barrel terracotta tiles to be used on top and one on the bottom. This is popular in the central Italian regions of Tuscany, Umbria and Lazio, according to Cooritalia Architectural Elements. 

The results of this historic use of material and installation are gorgeous.  

“Stunning architectural elements imported from Italy add texture and a sense of history,” according to the listing on realtor.com. “An entry featuring a brick barrel ceiling, hand-carved doors, limestone terraces and a carved wood ceiling salvaged from a Venetian villa are just a few of the features that transport you to the Italian countryside.” 

The home hit the market in February 2021, and sold for $20,000,000 in May.  

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About Cass

Cass works as a reporter/writer for RoofersCoffeeShop and AskARoofer. When she isn’t writing about roofs, she is writing about movies for her master's degree and dancing with her plants

Photo credit: The Dreyfus Group of Golden Gate Sotheby’s International Realty