More than two decades ago, Swedish-Italian philosopher-entrepreneur Daniele Kihlgren set out on a hotel project that would change the way people think about luxury travel. By restoring a humble abandoned village and transforming it into a tourism project—one that took historical protection as its premise rather than an obstacle—his Sextantio pioneered a style of hospitality that was authentic, experiential, regenerative and all those other standbys of travel marketing today.
Accolades followed. The Times called his first project one of the 12 most beautiful hotels in the world, and National Geographic wrote that it would be “difficult to get more authentic” than his second. Other publications declared it “as beautiful as a Figaro painting” and “a benchmark for quality tourism,” emphasizing that the starting point wasn’t a noble residence but a place whose identity was poverty. Condé Nast Traveller named him one of the 44 people changing the way we travel.
Now that his ideas have taken hold (in Italy and beyond), it’s easy to lose sight of how revolutionary they were. In 1999, he became captivated by the near-abandoned village of Santo Stefano, a small medieval stronghold in the interior of Abruzzo. He negotiated with many heirs to acquire the remains of several buildings, which were beautiful in their rough simplicity and testified to the history of the sheep-farming industry.
The hotel transformation included 28 rooms, an ancient cellar, a restaurant, a meeting hall and a reception area within the old barns, stables, cellars and peasant dwellings. It attracts tourists from all over the world, employs 25 people from nearby towns, and has led to the creation of dozens of other hospitality businesses in the village’s other buildings—breathing life into a place that would have been forgotten.
Some years later, he undertook a similar project in the ancient Sassi of Matera, cave dwellings that were once the “shame of Italy” and are now a UNESCO-honored tourism success story. He followed the same principles, which he calls the Sextantio method: full protection of minor historical heritage, no incongruous alterations or aesthetic “reinterpretations,” mutual integrity between village and landscape, reproduction of material culture and generation of widespread economic benefits for the entire territory. His Sextantio Le Grotte della Civita is hardly the only cave hotel in town, but it was an early pioneer and is still one of the best.
Another pillar of the Sextantio method is that it can be replicated, and not only in Europe. Kihlgren is getting ready to prove that with a new endeavor in Rwanda. Years in the making, Sextantio’s Capanne Huts Project on Nkombo Island in Lake Kivu is based on exhibits in the Ethnographic Museum of Rwanda in Butare, which contains traditional dwellings and the hut of the King of the Tutsi.
He spoke recently about his vision for cultural preservation, authentic hospitality in a time when that word’s been used to death, and finding weird, beautiful stillness in the heart of Africa.
“We try to be very philological, but the very essential thing is a project to preserve the small historical heritage with its landscape,” says Kihlgren. He wanted to prove that this history is something worth keeping and giving to future generations.
And it worked: “The first example [Santo Stefano] was basically an experiment,” he says, explaining his idea that with some imagination, a village could resist its own demise. “There was one hotel when I arrived. Now there are 23. Because of this experiment, we can say Santo Stefano is going to survive.”
Because Kihlgren’s starting points were villages whose earlier inhabitants wanted to forget and escape, his ideas were sometimes in conflict with prevailing ideas about development. “We were fighting very much against the local politicians,” he says, noting that they preferred the modernity of concrete to the decaying heritage of wood and stone. “They would try to build a new building if 75% of the historical building is abandoned.”
Instead, “We tried to preserve everything—the construction, the interiors and the material culture” like furniture, cooking implements and domestic art. He and his team undertook deep research into the living conditions of the Middle Ages.
“I arrived there a long time ago, and I had some money in my pocket,” he recalls. “I was very young, 28 or 29, and I thought, Let’s go to Africa and give the money to people in need.” This was a few years after the genocide in Rwanda, and he knew a priest there who helped him develop projects. They started with a maternity hospital in Congo, near the border with Rwanda, and it grew into a much larger nonprofit that oversees health insurance coverage for the most economically disadvantaged throughout Rwanda.
This is funded by personal donations, traditional fund-raising, profit-sharing from the hotels in Italy and, soon, with the revenue from the new hotel on Lake Kivu. “We have incredible clinical results” in decreasing child and maternal mortality, as well as reducing deaths from malaria, severe pneumonia and diarrhea, and HIV/AIDS, he says. “It’s very easy to help people with a small amount of money.”
After various setbacks, Kihlgren is optimistic that the huts will open next summer. He emphasizes that while the surrounding area has seen its share of conflict, Lake Kivu is peaceful. That’s the point: that it’s far from everything, a place where very little ever happens. “Few people go there, it’s in the middle of nowhere, and there’s nothing special about it except that you’re in the middle of nowhere,” he says. “It’s a very nice place to be alone.”
The two huts are designed for one group at a time, perhaps a family looking for deep rest after a safari. (There may be more huts in the future; there’s land enough for 20.) They’re built using the same techniques as the huts of the Tutsi king, which wasn’t a political choice but simply the only historical thing that had good proof of how it was done. “We had a little poetic license, but we made the same things with the same techniques,” he says. The domed huts have thatched walls and roofs, traditional Rwandan beds with layered straw mats and mattresses, and bathrooms equipped with WCs, showers and hot water.
There’s a convivial area and a local chef on hand to prepare meals, and they’re set up to organize low-key activities like boat trips in canoes dug out of tree trunks, beach bonfires and seafood barbecues, traditional night fishing and guided tours to the village, its market and the Sextantio Health Center. Their partners can take guests farther afield, including to the Nyungwe Forest some 10,000 feet above sea level, on safari in the Akagera savannah, gorilla trekking in Volcanoes National Park or to the capital of Kigali and the genocide memorial there.
But all of that is optional. Mainly, the camp is “for people who want to go away from any other place, who don’t want to see tourism,” says Kihlgren. “Sometimes tourism in Africa is very organized: You go there, and you go together. But here you go alone and do nothing, maybe just take a swim in the lake. And so what we have is likely weird, but I see this in a very good way.”
“I like my job,” says Kihlgren. “I would pay to do my job. To be very honest, I find difficulty with politicians, but beside that experience, I think there is a chance for these villages. And so I will do my best even if I don’t get any money. This is like a nonprofit thing that I do. And honestly, it’s going very, very well.”
He continues, “I don’t have a family, I don’t have kids. I can survive just paying the rent and my travel and everything, and I don’t have to accumulate capital. It’s much more important to me to find meaning in what I'm doing and have fun in my job. I’m the least commercial guy you can find in this world. I have nice people working for me, because when your goal is not just to line your pockets, the motivation is different. And in these 20 years, I’ve tried to select the people with a good motivation, because basically the project is everything.”