The Estate

Camporena, set among the olive groves and gentle hills of the Valdelsa, takes its name from a medieval castle that once stood on the ridge above. A small, fortified commune perched on the frontier between Florence and Pisa, Camporena was a place of consequence — until 1329, when the Florentine Signoria ordered its walls torn down rather than see them fall to rival hands. The inhabitants scattered across the valley, and the castle's stone was carried downhill to build the farmstead that stands here today.

The land, though, is far older than any castle. Olives have been cultivated on this hillside since the Etruscans first worked these slopes over two thousand years ago, and some of our most ancient trees — twisted, silvered, impossibly enduring — seem to carry every season in their bark. The oldest known fossils of the wine grape were found in the travertine stone just a short walk from where our vines grow now. Beneath the floors of the estate, a medieval olive press and underground grain silos remain visible — quiet traces of the farming families who lived and worked here for centuries, storing their harvests out of sight from the mercenary armies that roamed this borderland.

Over the generations, the property passed through some of Florence's most distinguished families, among them the Counts Bardi — Renaissance bankers whose chapel in Santa Croce was frescoed by Giotto. For as long as anyone can remember, the rhythm here has been the same: olives pressed in autumn, vines tended through summer, the land given back what it gives. Today Camporena farms 100 acres organically, producing Chianti wine and an award-winning extra virgin olive oil from the same soil that has been generous to the people of these hills for millennia. Eight apartments welcome guests who come looking for something that is becoming harder to find — good food, open sky, and the particular stillness of a landscape whose story is measured not in years, but in ages.