A SUMMER’S LEASE
You’d be hard pressed to find anywhere in Europe more beautiful than Tuscany. That’s partly down to the natural scheme of things – the voluptuous lie of the land, its hills cloaked in trees or ribbed by vines while patchworks of wheat fields or olive groves quilt the lower ground. But it’s also remarkable for the harmonious way that man has blended into the picture – with farmhouses and hilltop villages that almost look as if they’ve simply grown out of the earth. God, as they say, was the architect of Tuscany, but he brought in Michelangelo to do the decorating.
Make the to-tuscany.com website your first port of call. The agency only manages properties within Tuscany and has 760 on its books. We stayed in Torretta Barbischio in a tiny, medieval hamlet that’s perched on top of a hill like a stone crown. We had three large bedrooms, a view to die for, a terrace for eating, another for the pool, with the mini town of Gaiole in Chianti way down in the valley below. It felt as if we’d been squirrelled away in a safe house.
It was hard to go anywhere, but go we did. To Gaiole for shopping, a meal or two and drinks in the Castello di Spaltenna, home to a former prime minister, now a hotel/restaurant. We went to Siena, enjoyed gelati in the main piazza that stages the famous Palio horse race, to Florence to see the Uffizi and the much quieter Bargello museum of sculpture (and an embarrassing wealth of exquisitely carved ivory) and to delightful Radda in Chianti. But we were always delighted to come back to base, for swims and reads, plus cooking and eating on our terrace while watching the day fade and the black beauty of the silent night enshrine us.
A week at Torretta Barbischio, which sleeps six, costs from £1,958 through To Tuscany. To book car hire from Pisa Airport from £64 a week, visit holidayextras.com.