Tuscany, Italy

Badia di Pomaio

Price per night from$540.94

Price information

If you haven’t entered any dates, the rate shown is provided directly by the hotel and represents the cheapest double room (including tax) available in the next 60 days.

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (EUR500.00), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Style

Monastic modernism

Setting

Arresting Arezzo hilltops

It’s not the first ancient abbey to be reincarnated as a boutique hotel in Tuscany, but Badia di Pomaio might just be one of the most stylish. Sequestered high in the hills over Arezzo, this gently landscaped estate looks suitably timeless (if you ignore the sleek valley-viewing infinity pool) but step inside the sandstone building and you’ll be wowed by how designer Ilaria Miani tempers its rustic materials with stark statement features. The restaurant refreshes traditional Tuscan fare, the bar serves with invention and rooms are as restful as they are refined. Those who delight in detail will find themselves right at home here. (Oh, and don’t miss the wine cellar).

Smith Extra

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A homemade souvenir, given the night before check-out

Facilities

Photos Badia di Pomaio facilities

Need to know

Rooms

13, including six suites.

Check–Out

Noon, but flexible (subject to availability). Earliest check-in, 3pm.

Prices

Double rooms from £471.28 (€550), including tax at 10 per cent. Please note the hotel charges an additional local city tax of €3.00 per person per night on check-out.

More details

Rates include a bountiful breakfast buffet.

Also

All rooms are reachable by lift and have specially configured bathrooms.

At the hotel

Kitchen gardens, outdoor bar and grill, woodland walking trails, on-site boutique, wine cellar and dining space, free WiFi throughout. In rooms: TV, air-conditioning, minibar with local snacks and drinks, Bulgari bath products.

Our favourite rooms

In the main building, as noted bath tub fans, we were rather partial to the Junior Suite Double which allows for restorative soakings under dramatic beams with an eyeful of olive-grove greenery beyond.

Poolside

Shielded by shrubs, infinity-edged and with widescreen valley views, the pool commands a prime location among the well-tended grounds. There's a shallow end if you're splashing about <i>con la famiglia</i> (it's heated, too) and plenty of shade-dappled loungers for daytime napping/spritz sipping.

Packing tips

A quick primer on early Renaissance art will make for useful in-flight reading and those partial to pottery might want to bring a few extra layers to use for packaging – the on-site boutique might be small but it stocks some very covetable items.

Also

Be prepared to fall for the hotel's three resident felines; the staff became so smitten they built them their own two-storey cat house on the grounds.

Children

Over-14s only; extra beds to be added to some room types (subject to availability).

Sustainability efforts

The building was respectfully renovated using only natural materials and local craftsmen. Fruit and vegetables are grown in the tiered kitchen gardens and honey and olive oil are produced on site. Low-consumption LED lighting is used throughout the hotel and grounds and plastic straws have been banished from the bar.

Food and Drink

Photos Badia di Pomaio food and drink

Top Table

Take an evening table on the terrace's front row and settle in for a memorable light show – spectacular sunsets give way to the twinkling lights of the city in the valley.

Dress Code

Channel your surroundings in simple fabrics spruced up with statement modernist accessories.

Hotel restaurant

This being Tuscany, there seems little use in pointing out the fresh, homegrown, locally sourced, seasonal produce used throughout the moreish menu of updated regional fare. It's best experienced degustazione style – choose from three, four, five or seven beautifully presented courses (from simple antipasti and rich ravioli to succulent steak and decadent desserts) depending on your appetite; the wine-pairing option is a good way to open your palate to the fine array of local blends. Breakfast is a bountiful buffet of fresh-pressed juices, pastries, muesli, cold cuts, eggs and bacon. If you're still full from the previous night's feasting, go simple with homemade honey on toast – it doesn't disappoint. 

Hotel bar

Bar Serra is the most contemporary part of the hotel; a glass-panelled, iron-girdered space that fuses the old farm cottage with the main building. Inside, its more modern materials are softened with jute ceiling hangings, low-lit lanterns and simple pottery to make for a restful retreat from the afternoon sun. Convivial bar staff serve a well-chosen list of regional wines, beers and cocktails both classic and contemporary (we were rather partial to the spritz with a pomegranate twist). If you take your wines seriously, ask sommelier Mario about a sampling session in the impressively stocked cellar. 

Last orders

Breakfast is served from 8.30 to 10.30am, lunch from noon until 2pm and dinner from 7.30 to 9.30pm. The bar serves its last digestivo at midnight.

Room service

A full room service menu is on offer during restaurant hours and you can summon snacks, sandwiches and drinks all day.

Location

Photos Badia di Pomaio location
Address
Badia di Pomaio
Località Pomaio, 4
Arezzo
52100
Italy

Badia di Pomaio sits high on a hill overlooking the city of Arezzo and its surrounding verdant valley.

Planes

The closest airport is Florence, about an hour and a half by car (the hotel can arrange transfers for around €290 per car and €330 for a van). Pisa is the next closest option, a two-hour drive from the hotel (transfers from here are around €380 per car and €430 for a van).

Trains

Arezzo's train station is a 15-minute drive away where some connections from Florence take less than half an hour. It's also well served from Rome, too. The hotel will happily arrange transfers from the station for €50.

Automobiles

If you're planning to do anything more than pool lounging and pasta slurping, a car is pretty essential in these parts. Follow directions to Arezzo where you'll see signs pointing you hillawards to Pomaio and the hotel itself. Follow the winding Via delle Conserve until you pass another property called Podere di Pomaio, then a small church. The hotel entrance will be on your right about 50 metres after that.

Worth getting out of bed for

With the hotel neighbouring a fertile forest, there are plenty of trails for exploring on foot, by bike or even on a quad bike tour for two. In a clearing alongside a small river, you'll find the hotel's own beehives where guests can learn about the honey production – and even help out. For a gentler stroll, have a nose around the sweetly scented kitchen gardens where there's a prime picnicking spot. Nearby Arezzo might be less well known than its fellow Tuscan cities, but it's no less rich in charm. Not least in the Basilica of San Francesco where Piero della Francesca's jaw-dropping 15th-century frescoes The History of the True Cross dazzle in their detail. Explore the home of literal Renaissance Man Francesco Petrarca in the north of the city – it still houses thousands of priceless tomes, early 20th-century letters, 17th-century paintings and coins dating back to the 4th century BC. If you're serious about your souvenirs, Arezzo also happens to be one of the gold capitals of the world; a browse of its boutiques – many of them with centuries of history – is window shopping at its finest. Tuscany wouldn't be Tuscany without some road-tripping, though, and here you're well placed for wine tours around ChiantiMontepulciano and Montalcino, and city jaunts to SienaPerugia, even Florence.

Local restaurants

If you go to Italy and don’t dine in a town square did you even go to Italy? Get your piazza fix at Ristorante Logge Vasari in the centre of Arezzo where cucina classics are served with flair – on white tablecloths, naturalmente. For something more elevated, the tasting menu at Octavin puts an inventive twist on Italian ingredients. If you tire of pasta come dinner time, make a reservation at I 3 Bicchieri for first-class seafood in contemporary surroundings. 

Reviews

Photos Badia di Pomaio reviews
Verity Pemberton

Anonymous review

By Verity Pemberton, Fashion-forward polymath

Arriving in Florence and stepping out onto the tarmac, the heat of midday June wrapping around us, myself and Mr Smith jump into our rented Fiat 500 and make our way to Arezzo – and past it, up through the labyrinth turns of the Tuscan hills, framed by forests either side to arrive at our final stop.

A monastery in the 17th century, Badia di Pomaio is now a 14-roomed boutique hotel that sits high in the hills, 15 minutes up from the town. There’s a bit of that monastic serenity still there: the moment we step out the car, myself and Mr Smith are enveloped in an otherworldly calm. Making our way to the hotel – accompanied by a louche cat named Leopold, one of the hotel’s full-time residents – we are greeted by friendly staff and taken to our room.

A jug of freshly made lemonade and welcome treats are laid out and are so quickly eaten, I have no recollection of what they were, other than ‘delicious’. The birdsong outside invites us to open our shutters. We booked a Superior room with a view: a painterly one which extends out beyond the manicured garden and sweeps down into the valley. 

Badia di Pomaio’s design feels connected to the nature that surrounds it; renovated using only natural materials and local craftsmen. Our room is beautifully furnished in calm neutral hues accented with Italian cotton bedding, high vaulted ceilings, clean modern pieces, and a vase of Dahlias from the garden. Every item feels considered and with purpose. 

For our first evening we decide to dine at the hotel’s restaurant which is led by a Michelin-starred chef. Sitting under an awning enclosed by wrappings of wisteria and jasmine vines, lively Italian chatter acts as the backdrop to the menu of locally sourced, seasonal produce. 

There are a few guests who aren’t staying at the hotel but have travelled here just for the food, which Mr Smith and I agree is always a good sign. We survey the menu of inventive Tuscan fare, excited for our first Italian meal. 

Spring salad from the garden, so fresh and flavourful (no wonder, given the ingredients had only travelled around 20 meters to my plate). A starter of smoked burrata follows, arriving hiding under a glass bell jar, which, when removed reveals a hazy plume of smoke that evaporates into the evening’s air. 

We order gnudi with yellowtail carpaccio, I mean pasta is a must in Tuscany, no? It is so good that Mr Smith ends up ordering it again the next day. I opt for the all’aneto – a pastrami of wild red tuna, so beautifully presented it looks like a work of art.

For a nightcap we order Americanos and walk through the gardens to laze in some lounge chairs that overlook the city below, entranced by the dancing lights of Arezzo gleaming in the distance. 

The gardens themselves are beautiful but not just for show, flowers, berries, tomatoes, all are waiting to be picked and used in the kitchen. At breakfast in the morning, Mr Smith seems to have a new found love of condiments, perhaps it's because they are made from their ingredients. The honey comes from the beehives kept in the grounds who share their land with the hotel’s goats and chickens. 

We wander down to the pool, where visiting butterflies are flitting in and out of lavender bushes that outline the sun-bathed slope. The infinity edged pool sits in prime location with wrap-around valley views. After a hearty swim and a few chapters of my book I decide to order a spritz and, looking out at the view, feel utterly at peace. 

Hard as it is to leave such tranquillity, we decide to head down into Arezzo and see what the city has to offer, exploring the vaulted ceilings of Arezzo’s cathedral with its 15th-century fresco of Mary Magdalene by Piero della Francesca. 

We stroll through the piazza grande, an iconic backdrop in the film Life is Beautiful. Arezzo is also home to the oldest antiques fair in Italy (which, sadly, does not coincide with our stay). I peer through a number of beautiful stores closed during our visit and vow to come back again to see the market in full swing. 

After a lunch of wine and pasta at the delightful Antica Osteria L’Agania we make our way back to our tranquil hideaway. Sad to depart the next morning, we leave with a gift of honey left by our hosts: a sweet reminder of our time in the clouds.

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Price per night from $540.94