Meet the Guy Who Loves Hobbits So Much He Became One

This article originally appeared on VICE Italy.

In 2018, 37-year-old Italian pastry chef Nicolas Gentile, whose name translates to “Nicolas the Kind”, invested his life’s savings in a piece of land in the town of Bucchianico (population: 5,000) in the Abruzzo region of central Italy.

A big fan of the Lord of the Rings franchise, Gentile initially wanted to use the plot to build a family home where he could live in harmony with nature with his wife and two kids – just like hobbits, the small human-like creatures from J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantastical universe. But after throwing a big hobbit-themed party on the plot, Gentile realised he wanted to build a whole hobbit village on those grassy fields and welcome like-minded guests from all around the world. 

His project, named Contea Gentile (or “Kind County”, after his surname and life philosophy), has now gained the attention of hundreds of thousands of fans on his social media pages, including Instagram, Facebook and Twitch. To get the word out there, Gentile gathered a real-life Fellowship of the Ring which undertook a 280-kilometre trip on foot to throw a ring into Vesuvius, Italy’s most famous volcano, as if it was Mordor. 

Mission accomplished. His feat landed him coverage in the pages of international media outlets and even on Stephen Colbert's Late Show. Gentile also reached out to Elijah Wood, Billy Boyd and Sean Astin – the actors who played the hobbit characters in the Lord of the Rings films to gain visibility for his ambitious project, which will cost an estimated €1.6 million in total. The build is projected to be completed in the summer of 2022 and the site will operate as a bed and breakfast.

For now, Gentile’s version of the Shire only hosts a small, 20-square-metre prototype hobbit house, since the campaign to crowdfund the rest of the build has only just been launched. We spoke to Gentile about his peculiar life as a hobbit and why he decided to embark on this journey.

VICE: Hey Nicolas. How did you come up with the Contea Gentile project?
Nicolas Gentile: To tell the truth, I’ve always wanted to live in a hobbit house. Let's say it all became more tangible after I bought this piece of land in the hills of Abruzzo with its little creek and woods all around.

What will it look like once completed?
There will be many trails, vegetable gardens, animal sheds, a large hobbit house of about 350-400 square metres inspired by Bilbo Baggins’s home, plus four smaller houses of about 50 square metres each. They will be half-buried underground, with round doors and windows.

The construction will be 100 percent environmentally friendly. I could have built the houses out of concrete – no one would know since they’re all covered up – but that’s not really in the spirit of the project. Plus in the end I think [going for an eco-friendly construction] raised our crowdfunding goal quite a bit.

What does your family think of all of this?
My parents initially saw my passion as a hobby. With time, they realised it was serious. My wife Alice makes up 51 percent of the whole project. She is the real engine behind everything. My children, now 8 and 11, were born knowing we would one day move to the Shire, so you can say our passion for the hobbit world is a family affair.

Where do you get all your hobbit outfits?
Most of them were made by my mother and my aunt. The rest I ordered on cosplay websites, but you can also find them on Amazon. Overall, I have more hobbit than human clothes in my closet. I only wear the latter when I work, but I dress like a hobbit whenever I can.

Why does Tolkien’s fictional universe resonate with you so much?
In The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, there’s a beautiful quote by Gandalf the Gray, my favourite character, “It is not great deeds or great heroes who change the world, but small acts of kindness and love.” [Gentile’s quote is slightly paraphrased. Here is the actual quote.]

If we all were kind to each other in our simple ways, our small worlds would change in an instant. For me, the Shire is not about building hobbit homes, it’s about attracting people with the same magical outlook as me. I want to bring together people with a carefree heart, and maybe, as a group, we can aspire to something bigger.

So will the Contea Gentile be a permanent community?
No, it won’t. Rather, it’ll be a community that’s scattered all around the world. Anyone will be able to come to visit the Shire and stay for a few days, but they won't be able to move in, because I want to give everyone the opportunity to be a part of it. I’ve received very tempting offers from people who wanted to take over part of the land for a lot of money, but that would change the nature of the project, so I refused.

Every day, we’ll offer our guests two breakfasts instead of one, because hobbits love to have multiple breakfasts a day and we want to stay true to the real hobbit spirit. Obviously, we’ll only cook breakfast with locally sourced products.

People also suggested we sell Lord of the Rings merchandise, but if we do sell something it’ll be our own products – honey, pipe tobacco, jams, local products – all much better than t-shirts and charms.

There are many other hobbit villages around the world. Did you take inspiration from them?
I obviously know of the one in Matamata, New Zealand. It is the most beautiful Shire of all, but also the fakest [it is a reconstruction of the Lord of the Rings film set, offering tours to visitors]. There are other Shires, for example in North America, but they are purely themed B&Bs.

I, on the other hand, would like to create an authentic experience, letting people discover what it’s like to work the land, be in close contact with animals and take long walks in the woods. At the end of the day, us locals have always lived like hobbits around here. And our future customers – although I dislike this word – will notice that as soon as they walk out of the Shire and see our neighbouring farms.

Can you tell me more about your trip to Mount Vesuvius?
Undoubtedly, our journey to Middle Earth was organised to give visibility to the project, but also to do something that had never been attempted before – a trip from a real Shire to a real volcano.

More than 300 people signed up for the contest I created on Instagram to be a member of our Fellowship of the Ring. We were lucky to find very fitting fellows – for instance, the guy who played Gandalf knows all of Tolkien's works by heart and became our storyteller, while the guy who played Pippin wrote wonderful songs for the journey.

We did have some real challenges during the journey, like when we got lost for hours in the woods of the Molise region. We had another issue when we arrived in Pompeii and had to rush to a manager to ask for authorisation to enter the premises because people in costume are not usually allowed inside the archaeological site.

Scroll down to see more photos from Contea Gentile.