Il Castelfalfi

Il Castelfalfi

The village of Castelfalfi has been on this hilltop since the 8th century, the Medici arrived in the 15th as they tended to, and the tobacco warehouse was built in the early 1900s to give work to the people who lived on the estate. The current resort has absorbed all of this without flattening it, and the result is something genuinely unusual: a 2,700-acre working estate with a medieval borgo at its centre, a sleekly designed hotel, 31 traditional rooms in the restored tobacco warehouse, seven villas, 62 acres of certified organic vineyards, 10,000 olive trees, 40 beehives, a seasonal kitchen garden, and a public pool that the local community still uses. Florence, Pisa, and Siena are each about an hour away, which makes the estate as good a base as it is a destination. One hundred and forty-six rooms and suites across the main building and the tobacco warehouse, the former contemporary in design with Stefano Ricci toiletries and travertine marble bathrooms, the latter more traditional in Tuscan character with white-painted wooden beams and stone walls. The RAKxa Wellness Spa, overhauled in 2024 with Thai-inspired treatments, has both indoor and outdoor pools. Six restaurants and bars under Executive Chef Davide De Simone, all built on a genuine farm-to-table logic that begins on the estate itself: Olivina, the main dining room and food atelier with wine room, salumeria, bakery and open kitchen; Il Rosmarino, the trattoria a short walk from the hotel for wood-fired pizza and bistecca alla Fiorentina; La Rocca di Castelfalfi in the old castle for fine dining; and Ecrù, the lounge bar with panoramic terrace and live music every evening, where the correct move at dusk is a Negroni on the lawn as the hills go golden. Where Castello di Casole is intimate and deliberately removed, Castelfalfi is a destination in its own right, bigger in scale and richer in activity, a place that rewards a full week rather than a long weekend. Truffle hunting, e-bike tours through the vineyards, cooking classes with the estate's produce, a 27-hole golf course currently being rebuilt into one of the best in Tuscany, an adventure park, a Falfy Kids Club run on Montessori principles. The kind of place where a family with children and a couple who want to be left alone with the hills and the wine can both be equally well served, and where the estate itself, in its sheer scale and variety, becomes the purpose of your stay. Short version: A restored medieval borgo on a 2,700-acre working estate between Florence, Pisa, and Siena, with 146 rooms, six restaurants built around the estate's own organic vineyards, olive groves and kitchen garden, a new RAKxa Wellness Spa, and the true quality of a place where the days fill themselves and the week still feels too short. Open March to January.