Florence has no shortage of museum-style hotels. There are enough frescoed ceilings adorning grand palazzi where you’re too afraid to touch anything, and Quattrocento grandeur is kept pristine behind glass. Not so at Il Salviatino.
Florence feels pressed between the pages of a history book, and Il Salviatino, a 15th-century villa set high in the Fiesole hills, is blooming. Renaissance ideals of beauty, conversation, creativity and nature have been honoured but reimagined for modern living, by owner and creative director Alessandra Rovati Vitali. Once an aristocratic home and later an artistic salon, the villa is reborn into a botanical retreat.
Il Salviatino has shape-shifted through centuries of Florentine history. Starting as a grand residence of the powerful Bardi, Orsini and Salviati families. The latter, a famous succession of cardinals, diplomats and bankers re-frescoed and renamed it to Il Salviatino, distinguishing it from their nearby Villa Salviati. The estate became the literary salon of Italian writer Ugo Ojetti, where Dalà and D’Annunzio once gathered, and the building briefly serving as Stanford University’s Italian headquarters in the 1970s.
The Vibe
Under Alessandra Rovati Vitali, celebrated event designer, founder of botanical luxury brand Tearose and the villa’s creative director since the family’s 2018 acquisition, it’s blossomed into something refreshingly difficult to categorise. Her floristry background anchors the decor, with wild bouquets spilling from antique urns (meticulously arranged by in-house florist Esperanza) and floral fabrics that drape across dining tables with true sprezzatura.
Noticeably, nothing at Il Salviatino properly matches, and that’s where the magic lives. Hollywood Regency coffee stations rub shoulders with original oil paintings that hang next to wicker garden furniture. There are bold fabrics, hand-painted walls, whimsical sculptures and books everywhere you look. It’s eclectic and elegant. Like the home of a chic marchesa who collected every piece of furniture she ever admired across generations, and somehow they all fit. Which, effectively, it is, as concierge Paul Lydka tells me. Alessandra still arrives unannounced carrying newly sourced treasures, perhaps from Corydon in Sesto Fiorentino, and knowing instinctively where each belongs before she’s crossed the threshold. Some of these pieces coming from the 2018 Ritz Paris auction, including a table from Coco Chanel’s suite, now sitting beside the games room.
Outside, the gardens complete the story. The estate’s 12 hectares unfold between lemon-heavy Italian gardens, floating above what is surely the best view of Florence, home to the wilder Terzo Paradiso (Third Paradise) — Michelangelo Pistoletto’s living land-art project of more than 3,000 seasonal plants, blending permaculture with sustainability and contemporary art. Herbs and flowers are harvested daily for dishes, the spa and cocktails. And through an open window, the scent of rosemary and sage wafts inside, dissolving the boundary between indoors and out.
The Rooms
In keeping with Alessandra’s evolving eye, no two rooms at Il Salviatino are the same, a welcome rarity in the beige-neutral design era. The 39 rooms and suites span categories from Deluxe to Grand Suites, and staff joke that they occasionally enter a suite before check-in to discover furniture mysteriously rearranged. A sure sign the owner herself has swept through, moving lamps or deciding a chair would look happier elsewhere. It’s all wonderfully uncorporate, and a reminder that this is somebody’s home.
I stayed in the Presidential Tegliaccio Suite, whose windows frame the green folds of Fiesole, and a distant corner of Florence’s red-hued roofs. It’s grand but soft; there’s a large Audrey Hepburn monograph from the Ferragamo Museum on a dark mid-century coffee table, bookshelves stacked with Italian history, and a marble fireplace large enough to warm an entire Medici dinner party. The minibar is embossed with ‘Ritz Paris’, one of a few sourced from the auction. I spent far longer in the bathroom than I have in years thanks to the marble-clad walk-in (but sit-down) rain shower, with soft ambient lighting.
The standout is arguably the cinematic Grand Duomo View Suite, which spans the entire city-facing façade and features a vast terrace, a marble en suite, and a walk-in Tuscan pearwood wardrobe. The Ojetti Penthouse Suite, often reserved for honeymooners, is a contender too. Hiding an entire conservatory with seductive views into the bathroom, and a tiny office at the top of a winding staircase, its window overlooking the Tuscan hills like a living Renaissance painting. And conveniently next to the spa, the Grand Greenhouse Suite is shrouded in greenery, creating a private sanctuary to escape into.
Uniformity lives only in essentials; the bathroom vanities, Diptyque amenities, certain soft furnishings, and the floating scent of Giglio di Firenze diffusers by Dr. Vranjes Firenze, inspired by the Florentine iris from the surrounding countryside. Everything else is individual, each room telling a different version of the same story. An accumulation of centuries, with each era’s handprint still visible beneath the next.
The Food + Drink
A generous breakfast is served on the terrace overlooking Florence or the whimsical Affresco Room — all red-striped canopies, frescoed ceilings with the Salviati crest, and winding staircases like an Italian Alice in Wonderland — with a buffet of Tuscan cheeses (Pecorino Toscano in abundance) and cured meats, pastries and glossy fruit tarts. In the open kitchen, chefs prepare eggs and fresh juices to order behind duck egg-blue glass-fronted cabinets softened with tiny brise-bise curtains, while children wander in for more juice and cake, just as they would at home.
In the evening, the villa has the conviviality of a glamorous Florentine dinner party. At Da Giacomo al Salviatino (the Florentine sister restaurant to Milan institution Giacomo Milano), the garden once again becomes the main event. Head chef Rudy Saderi keeps things classically Tuscan. Using ingredients like saffron cultivated in San Gimignano since the Middle Ages, traditional Sangiovese wines (because what else would you drink here?) and locally reared beef for the iconic bistecca menu, with a grilled catch of the day too. On some afternoons, I catch a chef harvesting rosemary and sage from the gardens before disappearing back into the kitchen (unstaged, I promise, but absurdly on the nose). Any herb grown over a view of Brunelleschi’s Duomo surely tastes far better than it would elsewhere?
Thoughtful wine pairings spotlight smaller Tuscan producers, including bottles from celebrated Florentine winemaker Bibi Graetz, whose Bollamatta sparkling rosé awaited in my suite. At the art deco Rosa Bar, bartender Long’s Mito Mule (Campari, vermouth rosso, ginger beer) quickly became my aperitivo of choice. And naturally, there’s a Negroni masterclass available, celebrating the city where the cocktail was born.
The Spa
Set within the villa’s original greenhouse, the Aquae Vitali Spa is a sanctuary of Florentine herbalism. Despite its partially subterranean setting, natural light floods from above, illuminating the soft peach-toned stone and the quiet seating area, stocked with herbal teas from historic Florentine tea house La Via del Tè. Treatments bypass the modern ‘biohacked longevity’ jargon in favour of approaches rooted in epigenetics and centuries-old herbal traditions. Augustinus Bader and Santa Maria Novella facials combine phytotherapy and essential-oil rituals, using herbs sourced directly from the Terzo Paradiso gardens, deepening the connection between wellness and the landscape.
Its wellness circuit takes inspiration from ancient Roman bathhouses, including an infrared sauna, a Finnish sauna, hammam, Vichy showers, and an ice bath. Upstairs, guests can lounge with herbal infusions among flowers and soft fabrics that continue Alessandra’s signature indoor-outdoor aesthetic.
Best of all, the spa can be reserved privately, a thoughtful touch for families and multi-generational travellers who want to avoid repeatedly shushing their child as they splash about in the hydrotherapy pool. But equally perfect for anyone who’d rather not make small talk in a sauna. With bespoke programmes around sleep or detoxification, and an entire kids-and-parents’ treatment menu, there’s enough relaxation to go round.
The Little Extras
Il Salviatino excels in the extra details, like the water infused with fresh rosemary from the estate’s gardens, which appears in rooms daily. There are flower arranging classes, pasta-making workshops in the breakfast room, wine-tasting with the property’s sommelier, botanical tours of the Terzo Paradiso and even hot-air balloon rides floating above Florence and Fiesole at sunrise. During autumn, guests can head into the Tuscan hills for truffle hunting before returning for a truffle lunch at Da Giacomo. And in the sunnier months, picnics can be arranged by the olive groves. Beside those same groves sits the pool, and it may just have one of the prettiest views in Tuscany. Pale pink and floral parasols, mismatched linens and enormous cushioned loungers make it feel wonderfully dolce far niente. Even the pool bar, with its open windows and bohemian minimalism, feels like a dreamy countryside sitting room.
Families are welcomed warmly, and there’s a dedicated nanny service available from approximately €30 per hour for one-to-one childcare while parents settle into a long aperitivo at Rosa Bar. Outdoor games, including pétanque, giant Jenga, and cornhole, are scattered throughout the gardens to entertain both young and old.
To Do List
While Il Salviatino is a world away from Florence’s tourist churn, the city itself remains just a fifteen-minute drive away using the complimentary shuttle. One minute you’re standing before Botticelli’s Birth of Venus at the Uffizi or crossing the Ponte Vecchio, the next you’re back in the hills overlooking it all.
Florence’s high-speed rail links also make it an ideal base for exploring wider Tuscany and even beyond. Spend a day in Bologna for tortellini, Venice for its grandeur, Pisa and then onto Cinque Terre for a colourful day trip. Or for a slower pace, head deeper into wine country towards Chianti, San Gimignano, Siena and the Val d’Orcia.
Closer still are the villas of the great Florentine dynasties (the Corsinis, the Medicis, the Ferragamos) that pepper the Fiesole hills, including Villa di Maiano, once visited by Queen Victoria and later used as a filming location for A Room with a View.
Il Salviatino understands that the great Florentine villas were never meant to be admired from behind a rope. They were built to host, to gather, to feed ideas and people alike. Rather than preserving the villa as a perfectly polished relic of Florentine grandeur, Alessandra has put her spin on it. Reviving it as a place of beauty, creativity and life. At Il Salviatino, Florence blooms because it’s lived in, not cordoned off.
All images: Dario Garofalo
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