In our ongoing series, Millie Walton selects and explores the world’s best art hotels. In this edition, she travels to Monteverdi in Tuscany.
Monteverdi sits perched high up on a steep hilltop overlooking the Val d’Orcia: picture-perfect Tuscany where the morning mist rolls away to uncover the spearlike silhouettes of cypress trees, verdant sloping vineyards and olive groves.
This site was once the medieval village of Castiglioncello del Trinoro, which had been mostly abandoned for decades until Michael L. Cioffi, an American lawyer-turned-hotelier, started buying the stone buildings and slowly transforming them into first a handful of bedrooms, then a few suites, a restaurant, an art gallery, a cooking school. It’s now what’s known as, rather romantically, an albergo diffuso (a ‘scattered hotel’) with a cobbled street running through its centre.
Initially, one of the hotel’s employees admits, the surrounding communities were suspicious of the project, fearing another tourist trap, but Cioffi slowly won them round – not just because of the employment opportunities the hotel has created, but for his commitment to preserving heritage and celebrating art and culture. At Monteverdi, locals, alongside guests, can enjoy a programme of cutting-edge contemporary art exhibitions in a gallery designed by Foster + Partners, watch performances by world-class musicians in what was once the village’s church, and wander the immaculately tended gardens.
The Concept
It would be fairer to say that Monteverdi has grown into, rather than taken over, Castiglioncello del Trinoro. From the interior design and in-house art collection to the gardens, restaurants and spa, you can feel the thought and time that has gone not just into imagining each space and experience with the highest level of detail, but to also ensuring that each intervention or action pays tribute to the site’s history in interesting and surprising ways. It is an evolving and crucially collaborative project, with artists, writers and musicians regularly invited to take up residency within the hotel’s grounds. These residencies, unlike some others which can be overly demanding or prescriptive of an artist’s time, are largely unguided, with the aim of simply providing space for reflection and experimentation. London-based artist Nicolas Deshayes, one of the most recent residents, divided his stay between the hotel and the town of Nove, one of the great centres of Italian ceramics. His new series of ceramic sculptures, currently on show in the hotel’s gallery, references his experiences of learning about artisanal production processes as well as witnessing the agricultural activities in the land surrounding Monteverdi.
But it’s not just artists who are given time and space to feel inspired. Guests are invited to be curious. With the exception of a handful of privately owned houses and a few patches of roped-off land, you’re left free to wander and although it’s not a large site there’s a lot to be found: hidden gardens and seating areas, a little café and library, a swimming pool edged by lavender, the ruin of an old castle. From almost every vantage point, there’s a breathtaking view.
The Collection
The art at Monteverdi, explains Sarah McCroy, the hotel’s head curator and director of Goldsmith’s CCA in London, is ‘purposefully very eclectic’. At the same time, the pieces on display feel uniquely attuned to the site and the context, with nods to its history, the relationship between body and land, Italian materials and crafts, and the Tuscan landscape. Of course, this is because many of the pieces in the collection were directly inspired by surroundings – or are the result of the residency programme, which McCroy heads up with the overarching aim of helping artists develop their practices and try out new directions.
It’s exciting to walk across from breakfast into an art gallery, to see work that was inspired by the setting in which you’re standing, as well as to discover artists from across all stages of their careers and who are working with diverse mediums. In Zita, the hotel’s restaurant, there’s an extraordinary large-scale painting by the South African artist Ansel Krut; a sculpture by Laure Provoust, France’s 2019 Representative to the Biennale, is positioned in the indoor piazza; in the lounge bar there are a series of photographs – a visual cookbook – by Italian photographer Carlotta Bertelli; and each bedroom has its own mini collection that plays into the distinct character of the space.
The Design Details
Rome-based artist and interior designer Ilaria Miani was brought onto the project for her expertise in sensitive and imaginative restoration. At Monteverdi the focus throughout is on tactility and craft. Existing architectural details have been preserved, including the copper street lights and narrow windows. Bright colours and sleek, contemporary finishes prevent spaces from feeling dark while nearly all the furniture is bespoke and handmade by artisans from the region. Both Zita and the art gallery were designed by Foster + Partners, who are also renovating the church and designing a new restaurant.
The outdoor plunge pool at the spa
The gallery feels particularly special with vaulted brick ceilings and original wooden beams, but the real design highlight is the spa, where each area has been carefully crafted to create a particular sensory experience. It begins in a shallow heated pool enclosed with a dark cavernous space where there are different carved out seating areas with buttons to press for various jet pressures. The idea is that you alternate between this pool and the cold plunge pool, five to six times ideally, the receptionist told us, with your body fully submerged. From there, you head up the glass staircase to the ‘moderate’ sauna and then into the sensory showers, which play music and emit various tropical scents. You can take a break in the relaxation room to enjoy the view, drink some tea, nibble on some nuts, or continue on into the ‘very hot’ Finnish sauna. Then, when the heat gets too much, you slide open a door and drop down into another, outdoor cold plunge pool surrounded by plants and flowers. The whole experience is intense but deeply grounding.
The Rooms
No two rooms are the same at Monteverdi. This is partly owing to the architecture of the buildings, but also to Miani’s bold and playful approach to interiors. Some rooms are painted in vivid shades of green, purple or blue, while others are more minimal with a focus on floaty fabrics and raw wood. Ours, one of the village suites located directly above Zita, paired the rustic aesthetic of textured plaster and exposed wooden beams with smooth terracotta-coloured concrete floors and warm tones of pink and burnt orange. During the daytime, it felt light and spacious, with the shutters thrown open onto sweeping views over the green hills, and at night it transformed into a cosy hideaway. The Monte Cetona Suite, meanwhile, has its own balcony that extends out from the bathroom, complete with a large rectangular spa-like bathtub and a built-in platform for sunbathing and there are three village houses offering accommodation for large groups.
The Food & Drink
At Monteverdi, food – growing, cooking, eating – is considered to be its own kind of art form with a focus on fresh, simple, good quality, local produce and homey Tuscan flavours. The best way to understand this approach is to sign up for a class, led by chef Giancarla Bodoni, at the culinary academy. We learnt how to make different kinds of pasta as well as the best pistachio pesto we’ve ever tasted, plus were given tips for sourcing and identifying high-quality ingredients outside of Italy. When we’d finished cooking, we all sat around a farm style table outside to eat and were given a cookbook and stylish apron to take home. Other classes include cheese making or ‘Tuscan cooking’, all accompanied, of course, by plenty of prosecco and wine. Otherwise, enjoy delicious food being made for you at Zita, which is open daily for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The lounge and terrace bar is also open from morning to night, for tea, juices, soft drinks, wine and cocktails. There’s a whole section in the menu dedicated to Negronis and, when you order a drink, it comes accompanied by a large, beautifully crafted wooden ‘snack’ box.
Art in the Neighbourhood
Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Castiglioncello del Trinoro is in the heart of rural Tuscany, but it also happens to be equidistant from two of the most influential and important cities in the history of art: Florence and Rome. The only issue is there’s almost too much to see, at least in a single trip. In Florence, the Uffizi Gallery is the place to start with its vast collection of paintings and sculptures, stretching from the Middle Ages to the Modern period. Among the many, many treasures to be found is Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus (1485), Leonardo da Vinci’s Adoration of the Magi (1482) and Titian’s Venus of Urbino (1538). Meanwhile, Maxxi, the National Museum of Art from the 21st century in Rome is the first Italian national institution to be devoted to contemporary creative practices, with an impressive permanent collection as well as a wide-ranging programme of events and exhibitions.
Images credits: Monteverdi Tuscany, Copyright: Bernard Touillon
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