UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN
Lydia Slater finds a serene sanctuary in Siena, the perfect family base for exploring the picturesque city’s rich history
It seemed appropriate for me to be reading a translation of Decameron as our plane circled Florence prior to beginning its descent. Boccaccio’s mediaeval masterpiece tells the story of a group of young Florentines fleeing the Plague of 1348, who hole up in a delightful villa and tell each other stories to pass the time.
Almost 700 years later, my family and assorted teenage friends were engaged in a similar flight from another pandemic. Our planned summer holiday to the South of France had been thrown into jeopardy, the night before we were due to set out, by the sudden imposition of a two-week quarantine on returning travellers. But at the time, Italy was free from restrictions, so, like Boccaccio’s protagonists, we made straight for the peace and seclusion of the Tuscan hills.
Our destination was Santa Dieci, a 1,000-year-old brick watchtower standing on a hilltop amid vineyards and olive groves, gazing out over the rosy rooftops, turrets and spires of Siena. From the instant we parked, and the sound of the cicadas poured in through the open car doors, I began to feel the stresses of the past months dissipate.
With the timeless simplicity of its architecture, married to the sybaritic pleasures of its modern conveniences, Santa Dieci proved to be the perfect sanctuary. The metre-thick, white-painted walls and polished stone floors kept the airy rooms perfectly cool, and the decor was an elegant mix of antiques and contemporary chic. A wet-room led off our suite-with-a-view, and downstairs we found a fully stocked stainless-steel kitchen amply provided with coffee, pasta, fresh burrata, Parma ham, fruit, wine from Santa Dieci’s organic vineyards, and a homemade ginger cake in the shape of a heart… Exploring the grounds, wine glass in hand, I discovered a pretty garden and a loggia, adorned with a dining table and barbecue, an Indian four-poster bed for lounging on and a sunken caldarium. A few steps through the olive-trees led to the pool, which was fringed with cypresses, pomegranates and fig-trees heavy with purple fruit.
Under normal circumstances, we would probably have spent most of our time in this Eden, eating, reading and swimming, for there is plenty to do without ever leaving the property. One morning, I rousted the sleepy teenagers out of their nests for an early-morning private yoga class in the garden with a visiting teacher, which challenged our Italian as well as our flexibility. Later on, a ‘culinary anthropologist’, Orsa Pellion di Persano, arrived to talk us through Italy’s fascinating gastronomic heritage while, under her direction, we prepared ricotta and sage gnudi, chicken wrapped in ham and a sinfully rich panna cotta. We ate the fruits of these labours on the terrace under the stars. Another night, after a tour of Santa Dieci’s venerable wine cellars – encompassing an ancient escape tunnel for the watchtower’s garrison if they needed to flee the advancing Romans, and an underground well thought to date back to the Etruscan era – we feasted tipsily on Tuscan specialities with the property’s delightful owners Gianni and Elisa Massone. And I stole an unforgettable afternoon on another wine estate, the Tenuta Bichi Borghesi, cantering a willing horse across the Chianti hills and encountering deer and wild boar, as well as countless birds I’d never seen before.
But after several months of enforced social-distance at home, we were also eager to engage with the world again, especially with Siena’s architectural glories a mere 10-minute drive away from our watchtower. Normally, of course, these must be shared with all the other tourists on the global grand tour. Now, though it was mid-August, the pandemic meant that we found ourselves strolling an empty Piazza del Campo, where every café had free tables and eager-to-please staff. Siena’s extraordinary Duomo, striped in black, white, pink and green like a giant ice-cream, normally seethes with hot humanity. Today, it was silent, and we stood and gazed at its starry ceiling and dazzling mosaic floors in perfect peace; it felt as though we had been transported back in time.
The private side of Siena was revealed to us by Federica, a highly knowledgeable guide who escorted us around the different contrade
– the districts that battle each summer for supremacy in the Palio, the spectacular bareback horse-race around the Piazza – and explained the bitter rivalries that date back centuries. A highlight was a visit to a private house belonging to a member of the princely Borghese family, whose terrace offered an extraordinary panoramic view over the whole of the city’s rooftops. We stood there and marvelled, trying to imprint the beauty of it all onto our memories, while the sound of bells mingled with the cries of the swifts overhead. It was a scene that Boccaccio himself would have recognised, and one that I feel unspeakably lucky to have witnessed too.
Santa Dieci (www.tuscanynowandmore.com; sleeps up to 10), from about £3,030 a week.