Quiet luxury has arrived in travel. The most desirable hotels are no longer the flashiest, but those which feel timeless and deeply rooted in their surroundings. Castiglion del Bosco, a Rosewood gem in Tuscany, is exactly that: a luxury hotel which lives in harmony with the land and reflects the history and culture of the region.
In the hills of Val d’Orcia, the hotel is made up of dozens of converted farmhouses and stables which originally formed a mediaeval hamlet, or a borgo, that was home to Tuscan nobility. When the youngest son of the designer Salvatore Ferragamo bought the 5,000 acre estate in 2003, it had been abandoned for decades. Massimo Ferragamo and his wife Chiara went about a dedicated renovation project, turning the borgo into an Elysian retreat for friends and family.
In 2015, the estate became part of the Rosewood Hotel group — it now has 42 suites and 11 unique villas. I have come to stay for a couple of nights with my sister, after spending a weekend in Florence dodging selfie sticks, gorging on gelato and racking up a festival-level step count. Our limbs ache and we are in need of respite.
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The hotel is a cocoon of calm that commands sweeping views from its hillside perch. A cobbled walkway runs through the main stretch of the borgo, while ivy clambers artfully up the converted stables — it looks like a Tuscan Daylesford Organic. At the end of the walkway, a set of cypress-lined steps leads up to the ruins of the 12th-century fortress that gives Castiglion del Bosco, or “castle of the woods”, its name. Once a place of strategic importance in the mediaeval republic of Siena, it is now the domain of the deer, pheasants and wild boar that roam the estate.
After checking in, we are whisked over to La Canonica, the hotel’s laidback osteria, for a lunch of classic Tuscan fare: pappardelle with wild boar ragù, white beans with sage, delicately fried artichokes and seabass with greenery from the organic kitchen garden. The tables are set in front of a vast window that overlooks the valley, where tendrils of fog are beginning to form. It is spring, and the weather gods are feeling capricious. When the heavens open, the staff shake their heads in despair, insisting it’s never usually like this — we seem to have brought the English weather with us.
One of the principles that guided Massimo and Chiara was to make the estate feel more like a home than a hotel, which means there are plenty of cosy nooks. We decamp to the cigar room and sink into deep leather chairs to play backgammon by a crackling fire. We could be in an English stately home, but for the oil paintings of famous Italian poets like Dante on the wall (and, sadly, a plasma screen).
We decide to make the most of the deserted grounds, heading to one of the hotel’s outdoor infinity pools. The water is deliciously warm as we float on our backs, feeling cool raindrops on our faces. When the mist lifts, the landscape is more vivid than ever. The air is redolent with rosemary, fig and iris, and the valley hums with birdsong.
Where many high-end hotels are lavish to the point of wastefulness, there is a feeling of preserving tradition and living sustainably here. Vegetables from the garden appear in multiple different guises at the Michelin-starred Ristorante Campo del Drago, and are also used in the excellent cocktails at the bar. The villas and suites are filled with antique furniture and textiles made by local artisans, while the exteriors have been beautifully preserved, maintaining a sense of the place’s history as a Mediaeval hamlet. The Via Francigena, a pilgrimage route from Canterbury to Rome, passes alongside the estate, and there are several pathways through the unspoilt woodland to ramble through.
There are many hyperlocal activities to delight in, including truffle hunting with a tartufaio or wine tasting at the hotel’s vineyard. Here, they produce an award-winning Brunello di Montalcino — one of Italy’s most coveted reds that is known for its earthy hue.
One of the property’s crown jewels is its 18-hole private golf course, which is designed to seamlessly blend into the landscape. It is the only private golf club in Italy, and has welcomed high-profile guests including former president Barack Obama.
We round off our stay with a hypnotically good massage at the spa, where the cricked neck I’d developed from gazing up at one too many a frescoed ceiling in Florence becomes a distant memory.
I leave with the feeling that I have stayed at an incredibly generous friend’s house. Castiglion del Bosco manages to pull off that rare thing: to feel steeped in history yet delightfully modern. It is luxurious but unfussy; the kind of place you’ll want to come back to again and again.
