Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Admiring the view from a bedroom balcony at Villa Ardore. When you rent a villa, you expect a scenic setting, a handsome property, an adept staff if there is one. You don’t usually expect to be invited into a ceramic artisan’s studio and encouraged to paint designs on a plate which will then be glazed, fired and sent over to you at home.
But that’s what happens when you stay at Villa Ardore in the center of Tuscany’s Chianti region: you have the option to create alongside Nicoletta Penco , who produced the artistic ceramics used in the house. And it’s just one option, one way that owners Christian Scali and Stephen Lewis attempt to involve guests in Tuscan life. The Grand Salon at Villa Ardore Even without that extra effort, the villa, which opened last summer, would be worth checking into.
Dating back to the 16 th century, serving first as a lookout tower then a farmhouse overlooking the Tuscan hills and the towers of San Gimignano across the way, the main house is a patrician example of classic Tuscan architecture with stacked stone walls and a terracotta roof, furnished with a blend of detailed antiquities and contemporary style. In the common rooms and six bedrooms (a seventh can be created from an office and there are two rooms in the renovated stables above the spa), the owners spent 2.5 million euros over a year and a half renovating, modernizing and designing with Florentine architect Massimo Pieratelli.
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