About Heart of the Village Inn

Resident Owner-Operators

Rose and Anatoly are the resident owner-operators of Heart of the Village Inn. They live here. They know every guest by first name before they arrive. When you check in, you're not handing your credit card to a rotating front desk — you're being welcomed into someone's home by the people who chose this building, this village, and this life deliberately.

That choice didn't happen overnight. After years of corporate life in the Washington, D.C. area — and an informal tradition of hosting friends and family that never really felt like work at all — they decided to find a different way to live. Over two years, they considered more than 300 properties stretching from the Pacific Northwest to coastal Maine, looking for the right match. Vermont kept pulling them back: the outdoor culture, the farm-to-table food scene, the unhurried pace. Shelburne Village, with its historic charm and proximity to Burlington, was the answer.

The inn itself has history. Built in 1886 as a private residence by Cyrus Van Vliet — a prosperous local merchant — this Queen Anne Victorian stood as a family home for over a century before becoming a B&B in 1996. Rose and Anatoly are its fifth stewards, and the first to live on the property full time.

Most inns are managed. This one is lived in.

When Rose and Anatoly say they enjoy hosting guests, sharing breakfast, and pointing people toward experiences that build real memories — they mean it as a description of their days, not a mission statement. There's no management company, no absentee owner, no seasonal staff filling in. The people who greet you in the morning are the same people who chose every detail of what you're waking up to.