[imagesource: Nicolas Gentile]

I recently rewatched all three The Lord of the Rings films again.

A two-day hangover will do that to you.

Anyway, Peter Jackson’s adaptation of the J. R. R. Tolkien classics holds up, although my hangover subsided before I went all-in on Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy.

You can bet Nicolas Gentile has watched and rewatched all six films, given that he has now been living as a hobbit in the Italian countryside for a number of years.

During that time he’s built a solid community of followers on Instagram (more than 130 000). He has also been featured in stories across multiple international media outlets.

The latest to the party is VICE, which put together a look at what Gentile’s day to day life looks like;

After graduating in Rome, Nicolas Gentile realised that big city life was not for him. He came back to his hometown on the hills of Abruzzo and decided to build his shire to live like a real-life hobbit.

To raise money for this project, he climbed Mount Vesuvius with his fellowship and threw the ring in its crater.

Gentile, who says he’s had a reputation for being a little odd his entire life, manages to hold down a job at the same time as pursuing his hobbit hobby.

Fair play to him for sticking to his guns and being unapologetically himself:

[source:vice]