Mr & Mrs Smith

Villa Armena

Tuscany, Italy

Villa Armena hotel in Buonconvento has baroque swagger by the bedroom-load, a plum Tuscan location, a basement wine cellar, a madcap eco-friendly pool that looks like a little beach and two excellent young chefs, but it’s the charming family owners (and their 40-kilo canine, Franco) who really make it worth the trip…

Need to know

• Rooms 10, including five suites.
• Rates Double rooms from $358.33 (€268), excluding tax at 10 per cent.
  The price shown represents the lowest nightly rate for a double room available at this hotel over the next 21 days. Any price conversions from the hotel's local currency (€268) have been conducted using today's exchange rates from xe.com.
• More details Rates usually include breakfast: Continental, buffet, American or à la carte.
• Facilities Library, free WiFi. In rooms: flatscreen TV, minibar, Etro toiletries.
• Poolside There’s a pool in the gardens, surrounded by squashy grey outdoor armchairs plump with lime-coloured cushions. In typically eccentric fashion, the pool is modelled on a sandy beach: fashioned from quartz sand and sea sand, and moulded with irregular dips and sweeps.
• Check-out 12 noon, but flexible, subject to availability. Earliest check-in, 2pm.
• Children Over-sixes are welcome. Extra beds (€30 a night for 6–12-year olds; €50 a night for over-12s) can be added to rooms. The chefs will happily adapt menu items for younger palates.
• Also Request an in-room beauty treatment from one of the hotel’s two masseuses, who dabble in masks, scrubs, massages, manicures, peels and slimming treatments.

Food and drink at Villa Armena

• Hotel restaurant

  Armena’s terracotta-coloured restaurant, Sorbo Allegro, is named after the 100-year-old rowan tree in the garden, and tables are decorated with tiny flower-filled vases and little clusters of twigs tied with ribbon, all designed by the very gorgeous Elena. There are two talented young chefs in the kitchen; their food is elegant, fun and full of flavour. Dishes make the most of the area’s natural larder: wild boar tartare, prawns with anise and purple cabbage, and risotto with saffron and liquorice powder. Everything is made on-site, including the bread, pasta, cakes, chocolate and ice-cream.

   

• Dress code Your baroque best: silks, acid-brights, a flash of gold or a froth of lace.
• Top table As close to the French doors as possible, so you can drink in the garden views. If you’d rather just drink a glass of wine or two, sit in a little corner nook in the living room, beside the cabinets stuffed with glittering glassware.
• Last orders Lunch is served between 12 and 2pm; dinner is 7pm until 10pm. Breakfast is served from 7.30am.
• Room service You can order food to your room between 8am and 10pm. Items from the restaurant menu are available between 12 and 2pm, and 7pm until 10pm – outside those timings, there’s a smaller selection.
• Hotel bar

  There’s no formal bar as such, but there’s something even better: an atmospheric basement wine cellar, stocked with enough barrels and bottles to keep you tipsy ’til check-out. Owner Edoardo’s glamorous mum, Laura, is a seasoned wine buff: have a tasting with her in the cellar, accompanied by a plate of delicious cold cuts and cheeses. The living room has a stash of vini da meditazione (wines designed to be sipped without any accompaniment), as well as a selection of grappas and other heady spirits.

   

Also worth knowing

• Weddings This property is suitable for weddings. More...

Villa Armena Località Armena, Buonconvento, Siena, Tuscany, 53022