Rosewood Castiglion del Bosco

The road from Montalcino climbs through oak woods for a quarter of an hour before the first vineyard rows appear and, above them, the broken tower of a castle. This is Castiglion del Bosco, 2,000 hectares of the Val d'Orcia that Massimo Ferragamo bought in 2003 and opened as a hotel in 2006. Rosewood has run it since 2015, and the name on the gate is Rosewood Castiglion del Bosco, Montalcino.

History

The castle is documented from the twelfth century, one of a chain of fortified hilltops between Siena and the Maremma, and the village beneath it grew up around the wine and grain the land produced. The estate passed through Sienese noble families and, in the twentieth century, into agricultural decline. Massimo Ferragamo, the youngest son of the shoemaker Salvatore Ferragamo and chairman of the family company in the United States, bought the property in 2003 with the intention of making wine as much as of building a hotel. The winery was already a founding member of the Consorzio del Brunello di Montalcino, created in 1967, and he rebuilt the cellar before he restored a single bedroom. The hotel opened in 2006, the golf course followed in 2011, and in 2015 Ferragamo handed management to Rosewood Hotels & Resorts while keeping ownership.

Architecture and design

The hotel is the village itself. The borgo's stone houses, the former school and the priest's house were restored room by room with chestnut beams, terracotta floors and the ochre plaster of the region. The castle was left as a ruin, stabilised, with its tower rising above the lawn. The chapel of San Michele Arcangelo, next to the borgo, holds a fresco of the Madonna and Child with saints painted by Pietro Lorenzetti in 1345, one of the few works by the Sienese master still in the place for which it was painted. The Val d'Orcia, around it, has been a UNESCO World Heritage landscape since 2004.

Rooms and suites

The suites are in the borgo, several with their own gardens and terraces facing the valley. Spread across the estate are villas, former farmhouses restored with private pools, kitchens and staff, taken by families and by groups who want a week among the vines. A second group of suites was added to the borgo in the hotel's second decade.

Dining

Ristorante Campo del Drago is the formal dining room, named after the vineyard below it, and holds a Michelin star. Osteria La Canonica, in the old priest's house, serves Tuscan dishes at a more relaxed pitch, with its tables under the loggia in summer. The estate's cooking school runs classes with produce from its own kitchen garden, and the winery offers tastings of its Brunello, including the single-vineyard Campo del Drago, in the cellar.

Wellness

The spa occupies a set of vaulted rooms in the borgo with treatment rooms, a sauna, steam room and an indoor pool, and there is an outdoor infinity pool looking over the valley. The golf course, 18 holes designed by Tom Weiskopf and opened in 2011, is the only private golf club in Italy and is open to hotel guests. Walking and cycling trails cross the estate, and the woods are hunted for truffles in season.

Weddings and events

Weddings use the chapel of San Michele Arcangelo for the ceremony and the borgo's piazza, lawns and loggias for the reception, with the castle ruin as the backdrop. The villas take wedding parties for the days around the event, and whole-estate buyouts are common for large weddings. Corporate groups use the private dining rooms and the cooking school; the estate has no ballroom of the conventional kind.

Location

The estate lies within the comune of Montalcino, about 12 kilometres north-west of the town by road, on the edge of the Val d'Orcia. Pienza, Montepulciano and the abbey of Sant'Antimo are all within an hour. Siena is roughly 50 minutes by car and Florence airport about two hours. Among luxury hotels in Tuscany it is the one with the largest estate behind it, and the only one where the house wine is a Brunello made on the premises.