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Villa La Massa Hotel, Candeli. A hayloft turned into bistrot, a windmill converted to restaurant

A twenty-acre Tuscan oasis tucked between the river Arno and the Chianti hills. Here, guests experience the countryside in a renovated agricultural structure

Villa La Massa 2021 re-opening

On May 20, 2021 Villa La Massa re-opens its season 2021, welcoming its guests in its oasis of peace and privacy. Five buildings make up the village. Villa Nobile, the main body of the hotel, the Villino of the early twentieth century, the Mill, dating from the fifteenth century, the Farmhouse, dating from the mid-nineteenth century, and the Limonaia.

Further, since 2020 Villa Hombert is also available. Three apartments of sixty, seventy and eighty square meters, with small equipped kitchens, characterize the new structure. To guarantee its guests a peaceful stay, Villa La Massa also offers the possibility to reserve the entire structure or individual buildings. Guests can, therefore, carve out their own intimacy and live a unique experience on the banks of the Arno. Just fifteen minutes from the center of Florence, with a view of the Chianti hills.

A free shuttle service is also available, from the hotel to Ponte Vecchio, and back. In addition, the vast extension of ten hectares of the park overlooking the bend of the Arno allows guests to enjoy the outdoor spaces in contact with nature. An iris garden with many varieties of plants and flowers characterize the area.

Lampoon review: Villa La Massa history and property

Florentine aristocrats promoted the development of the late thirteenth-century countryside property of Villa La Massa. Italian nobility was, in fact, the original owner of the structure until 1948. Since then, the Medicean era structures underwent a complete renovation. It became a hotel complex with its own wine cellar and restaurant. The park of Villa La Massa extends its twenty-five acres along the banks of the river Arno, towards the hills of Chianti Rufina.

Villa La Massa is member of luxury hotel groups Gruppo Villa d’Este and The Leading Hotels of the World. At a fifteen-minute-drive away from Florence, it offers a stay in the heart of the Tuscan countryside. With a choice of fifty-one rooms and suites, it welcomes guests in five structures. The Renaissance-style Noble Villa, Villino and Mill, as well as the more contemporary Casa Colonica and La Limonaia.

The Noble Villa, Villino and Mill maintain a historical atmosphere with their wrought-iron four-poster beds, boiseries, frescoed ceilings, terracotta and wooden planks, upholstery with linen weavings, and marble bathrooms. The furnishings, lamps and artworks at Casa Colonica and La Limonaia are products of local craftsmanship.

Villa La Massa’s culinary and wine proposals

Guests have lunch at L’Oliveto, the bistrot housed in the ancient hayloft overlooking the swimming pool. The menu offers recipes of the local tradition prepared with farm-to-table ingredients as well as with the oil produced from the Villa La Massa olive groves. Tables are set on the terrace and inside the exposed stone walls of the hayloft. Clients can also reserve the rooftop loggia for a lunch above the lemon trees. Further, they have dinner on the lake view terrace of Il Verrocchio, the restaurant in the historic windmill.

The menu includes a selection of recipes that homage and reinvent dishes of the Italian and Tuscan culinary tradition. The fifteenth-century wine cellar offers more than two-thousand labels. It hosts wine tastings as well as private events. Under its nineteenth-century frescoed ceiling, the Medicean bar in the Noble Villa serves whiskeys, brandies, cocktails, and the liqueurs produced by local perfume and essence manufacturer Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella. If requested, the hotel organizes guided tours of Florence, Siena, other cities and villages in the area, of otherwise inaccessible private villas and gardens, and of ancient local wineries, such as that of the Frescobaldi family estate in the Castle of Nipozzano.

Villa La Massa

Via della Massa, 24, 50012 Candeli FI

Villa La Massa is nestled in the Tuscan countryside. It is surrounded by an estate of ten hectares rich in lemon trees and olive groves. The property sits on the banks of the Arno River. A few kilometers south of Florence, and at the gateway to the Chianti region.

Giulia Giudici

The writer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article.

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