Arriving at Borgo Pignano isn’t unlike the moment you first see Botticelli’s Primavera in the Uffizi. The rooms before the painting are lined with the works of earlier artists; pancake-flat landscapes and unfortunate depictions of baby Jesus, who, despite superstar status at the time, would spend his pre-Renaissance era looking at once six months old and 60 years old.

And then it happens: the Botticelli hits you like air-con. The two-dimensionality of his predecessors and baby Jesus’s unsettling six-pack are suddenly an epoch away. To paraphrase Rihanna, as I must, this is what you came for: to experience the IMAX-magnitude of the Renaissance. It’s the same reason you’ve come to Borgo Pignano; to glimpse peak Tuscany, just as Botticelli, Da Vinci and Michelangelo are, to this day, peak Renaissance. Ultimately, you’re here to see something famous, or at least famously impressive – an ancient landscape so gorgeous and specific, it needs to be seen to be believed.    

Our journey starts in Florence’s Piazza del Duomo. I would recommend you start in the same place: a few days sizzling in the city heat and squeezing through selfie sticks only serves to make Borgo’s sedative lure all the more medicinal once you arrive. Once you’ve cleared Florence’s walls, river and highway, every sizable stretch begins to rack up another notch on the bucolic-o-metre. There could be a whole continent between here and the tourists back at the Uffizi, despite the fact they’re barely an hour in the rear view mirror. Suddenly, a fork in the road: turn left to paradise. 

Winding along Borgo’s tree-lined driveway, my partner and I turn to each other, confused. “Are we joining a cult?” I ask, not entirely unhappy at the prospect of an invitation. On either side of the car, a long line of men and women, each with their backs to us, most of them sitting, trying to spot something in the distant rolling hills. It takes us a second to see that they are, in fact, painting. What I didn’t know at the time was that this was London’s Royal Drawing School Class of ’24, on the class’ annual end-of-term sojourn to Borgo Pignano. Though you’d be forgiven for thinking they’d all ended up here though some collective gravitational pull, it is in fact by invitation of the school’s founding patrons, Welsh entrepreneur-investor-writer, Michael Moritz, and his equally philanthropic wife, Harriet Heyman, who just so happen to own – you guessed it – Borgo Pignano. 

This Etruscan-era hamlet has been many things since its first documented mention in 1139; a fortified castle, a razed battleground, a humble farmstead and – thanks to occupation by the wealthy Incontri clan – a prestigious country seat in time for the late 17^th century. Eventually though, a cocktail of hedonism, exodus and world war would lead Pignano back into a hard-scrabble farming community for much of the 1900s. The estate would be chopped up and neglected by various owners until Moritz and Heyman purchased the lot in 2000, seeing potential in this exhausted mass of half-finished staircases and squalid swimming pools. A whole 10 years of careful restoration later, it opened in its current form: a five-star countryside retreat. 

Having not stepped so much as a foot through the ivy-crawled walls of Borgo’s main villa, bags are duly whisked off to our suite – “you’re in one of my favourites”, general manager Simone Arcucci tells us, conspiratorially. As keys are being fetched, two of the classiest Aperol spritzes you’ve ever seen arrive in the small courtyard seating area in which we’ve collapsed. Let’s put it this way – if Adam and Eve were to be dropped into Borgo’s garden, we’re not sure they’d notice much of a difference from their previous digs. The garden would be the hotel’s uncontested glory should there not be such strong competition from its Instagram-famous pool and the fancier of its two exceptional restaurants, Villa Pignano. The three of them together, á la Campbell, Evangelista and Turlington, make for an almost distressingly perfect trinity (distressing on account of the dread you can already feel, welcome spritz barely in hand, knowing that you’re eventually going to have to leave it).

Inside the main villa, interiors have a Soho Farmhouse meets Call Me By Your Name aesthetic – stripey, on-trend fabrics and splashes of Tate-worthy art alongside restored frescoed ceilings, oversized flowers and sheer curtains. A palette of sage green and buttery ochre extends across the estate: in the 14 guest rooms here, the eight stand-alone villas, 10 maisonettes (La Stallina is Mike’s chosen home-away-from-home), and the 13^th century Priest’s House. Our suite – La Colomba – welcomes us with a bowl of strawberries picked from the hotel’s five-acre garden and a bottle of Borgo’s own Rosso del Guardia from the on-site vineyard. In the bathroom, its coveted soap – lavender, rosemary and cypress – doubles up as a marketing tool, persuading many guests to take up Borgo’s soap-making workshop (beating horse riding and cooking classes for most booked excursion, so we’re told). 

We would experience none of these. Our stay is a blue-skied sensation from start to finish. It makes us an annoying, but consistent five minutes late for every evening reservation, unable to stop taking pictures of the sun’s last gasp across the undulating farmland. On clear days, you can just about make out the union of Corsica and the Tyrrhenian Sea, a whole 70 miles away. But if Borgo Pignano is the crown, then Villa Pignano – with its shining, green Michelin Star – is its jewel. Here, tables are positioned at the foot of Tuscany’s most romantic sprawl. See also: a scallop, red prawn and watermelon crudo starter; so delicious. 

Al Fresco, the hotel’s more relaxed option, gave us perhaps our best night, as we mused upon thickly topped wood-fired pizzas, floral tomato salad and spritzes. Golden hour here had a way of making other golden hours look oxidised. Come morning, this is the just about the only spot where breakfast isn’t served, meaning guests can experience one of Villa Pignano’s front row seats even if they intend to forgo the pricey dinner reservation. Like everything here, breakfast is a celebration of the perimeter: bread made from the estate’s antique seedstocks; free-range eggs from its roaming Valdarno chickens; aged prosciutto from the Cinta Sensese pigs; and honey from the on-site beehives, best served drizzled over homemade granola. 

Everyone at Borgo Pignano is living some iteration of ‘the life’, but perhaps none more than our painter friends from the driveway. I walk past the arresting self-portrait of British artist Ishbel Myerscough hung up in the hotel’s sandalwood-smelling lounge (scents concocted in-house, of course), only to spot her painting down near the lake on one of our hikes. She would, I later find out, wake up for a swim at 5.20am and start work on her first landscape before breakfast. The Painter in the Limestone Infinity Pool, pastel on canvas. We chat to more budding artists down by the pigs, and an alarm goes off on a young man’s phone – it’s the first time in 48 hours I’ve remembered the notion of a schedule.

I’ll set my alarm for 2026 when Borgo Pignano’s second outpost in Florence, promised to occupy the largest grounds of any hotel within city limits, is slated to make its debut. Better yet, just wake me up when it’s ready.

From £295 per night.

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