Tuscany, Italy

Oasyhotel

Price per night from$669.72

Price information

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

Prices have been converted from the hotel’s local currency (EUR600.00), via openexchangerates.org, using today’s exchange rate.

Style

Agri-cultured mountain lodge

Setting

Up and up Apennines

Compared to Tuscan palazzos, Oasyhotel’s wood cabins seem a touch…humble. But the real luxury here lies in the chance to lose yourself in nature among the mountainous climes of the Dynamo Oasis Nature Reserve. Each tier of the terrain has a new surprise too, be it art installations, farming or an altruistic camp to support sick children. Its noble mission includes conservation too, and sightings of skittish deer and distant wolf howls will remind you just how humbling it is to simply be here.  

Smith Extra

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A cocktail for each guest at the bar

Facilities

Photos Oasyhotel facilities

Need to know

Rooms

17 lodges, 14 doubles, two for families. and one lodge secluded forest lodge.

Check–Out

11am, but flexible, subject to availability. Earliest check-in, 3pm.

More details

Rates usually include a farm-fresh breakfast, plus watersports, e-bikes and a shuttle to other areas of the reserve. A two-night minimum stay applies on weekends.

Also

Due to the rugged, uneven terrain, and slopes to hike up, Oasy isn't best suited for guests with mobility issues.

Please note

The hotel’s national identification code (CIN) is IT047024B5Q5OKF4XB

Hotel closed

The hotel is open annually from 27 March to 7 November.

At the hotel

Stables, lake for watersports, tennis court, screening room, spa treatment rooms, visitor centre, art gallery, e-bikes, concierge, laundry service (for an extra charge), library and free WiFi. In rooms: Bluetooth radio; bar corner with wine, a selection of biscuits from the chef, fruit juices, water, a Nespresso coffee machine and tea-making kit; selection of books; torch; trail maps; Dyson hairdryer, and Oasi Dynamo bath products.

Our favourite rooms

Oasyhotel’s lodges may not be frescoed, but there’s a stylishness to their simplicity. Fully timbered with locally logged wood, they’re made homey with coloured throws and blankets, custom-made linens, framed maps on the walls and the odd sprig of greenery. You need little more embellishment when the full force of nature is framed by large windows or can be lazily marvelled at from the Adirondack chairs on your veranda. Families should note that the family lodges have two sets of bunks, so parents hoping for a little romance should book a separate secluded lodge.

Poolside

Dip into the hotel's protected swimming lido, AKA bio-pool, which is set within the Reserve's emerald-hued lake and framed by a wooden deck.

Spa

Oasyhotel is all about buoying physical and mental wellbeing, and spa healing with organic lotions and potions are an important part of this. Aromatherapy, reflexology, cupping and dry-brush exfoliation will add to the freeing feeling fostered here; opt for the open-air massage for further communion with nature (book 48 hours in advance). Yoga and meditation classes are held on-demand in an alfresco beauty spot; and there are so many verdant corners that forest bathing is nearly an extreme sport around these parts.

Packing tips

Clothing for clambering up a trunk, paddling through a lake, saluting the sun at altitude and basking in the glow of a bonfire.

Also

Request a movable feast for the forest — the kitchen will pack a basket with a blanket and goodies grown and made on-site. You can take a little bit of Italy home with you too: the online shop sells house-made produce.

Pet‐friendly

One dog under 20kg is allowed in each lodge. A cleaning fee of €75 applies and your furry friend will get treats, a mat, pillow, bowl and baggies. Dogs must be leashed outside lodges. See more pet-friendly hotels in Tuscany.

Children

Welcome, and your little cubs will take to this wonderland like a re-integrated wolf pack. Family Lodges sleep four in two sets of bunks.

Best for

All ages can stay, but children old enough to walk — or rather hike — swim and climb a tree will get the full benefit of a getaway here.

Recommended rooms

The Family Lodge has two sets of bunks, so it’s where to stash the kids. Or, in a Double Lodge, it’s €100 a night to use the lodge’s sofa-bed for under-12s.

Activities

As a rule of thumb, what enchants adults here is equally thrilling for little ones, so they can partake in all the outdoorsy fun (aside from some of the tougher hikes), frolicking in the bio-pool, mucking in on the farm, making ricotta and more. Plus learning how to track animals and build emergency shelters. The visitors’ centre has lots of age-appropriate learning materials too.

Swimming pool

Little ones are welcome to use the pool or swim in the lake as long as their parents are supervising.

Meals

There's a dedicated kids' menu, but dishes don’t make too much of a fuss here – it’s simple, delicious fare that can easily cross over to the kids’ table.

No need to pack

Bring pint-size wellies and rainproof clothing for muddy walks, and download a nature-identification app so smalls can learn about the different types of trees and critters.

Sustainability efforts

Oasyhotel has an exemplary back-to-the-land ethos. Their mission is to create sustainable properties in Italy’s protected natural parks, working alongside the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature). The Oasi Dynamo reserve was a hunting ground until the WWF recovered the land, protecting the biodiverse flora and fauna within. Then, agricultural enterprise Oasi Dynamo Società Agricola implemented non-intensive farming and forestry, alongside regenerative tourism, to make a largely self-sufficient outpost (food produced on-site is used in the kitchen or sold in the online shop, with all proceeds going towards running costs). All produce is bio-certified. Rare plants and troubled endemic species are given the opportunity to thrive here, and the reserve welcomes students and scientists, who track and study species. Hotel lodges have been built with little disturbance to surroundings, and guests can use e-bikes for exploring among other nature-based activities. There’s an altruistic streak here too: Oasyhotel co-exists with the non-profit Dynamo Foundation, an academy where local children learn about conservation, and a yearly camp for children living with disability or chronic illness, where there are therapeutic activities, from circus skills to art therapy.

Food and Drink

Photos Oasyhotel food and drink

Top Table

Out in the fresh air during the hotel’s barbecue sessions. Or resting on your veranda with a drink in hand.

Dress Code

If you want to make an effort, clean the mud off your hiking boots.

Hotel restaurant

There are a few dining spaces on-site. Le Felci feels like a grown-up summer camp, with its canvas chairs, wood beams, and a stylish take on gas lanterns hung from tentpole-like struts. But, in lieu of mess tins, meals are hearty rustic affairs where each ingredient’s provenance can be pinpointed to somewhere within the park borders (everything is grown within a kilometre of the hotel’s front door). Menus change with the season, but expect sauces made with just-plucked vegetables, ricotta and aged cheeses from the hotel’s dairy, ethically reared meats made into just-like-nonna’s meatballs, and regional cakes and creamy desserts. Le Felci Bistro, meanwhile, is set in the main lodge, near reception, and serves apéritifs, cocktails, and light bites in a relaxed setting. Further afield from the hotel but still within the reserve, Casa Luigi is a standalone, art-filled farmhouse, which can be booked privately on request, where meats are grilled, simple homemade pastas are served and cheeses and charcuterie are laid out to pick at — all to be washed down with bio wines and local beers. And, for summertime picnic lunches (sandwiches, cheeses, charcuterie…) head to Kiosk by the Lake.

Hotel bar

There’s a free-range approach to drinking here — most gather in the hotel’s main lodge where there are plenty of comfy sofas, sociably arranged; and there’s a kiosk dishing out refreshments by the lake. Wines are top-drawer — including bio picks — and hail from renowned Tuscan vineyards, but the cocktails, composed using fruits and fixings from the grounds, are worthy of your attenzione too.

Last orders

Le Felci serves breakfast from 7.30am to 10.30am, dinner from 7pm to 9.30pm. Le Felci lounge serves from noon to 7.30pm. Drinks are poured from noon to 11pm.

Room service

Trays of sandwiches, cheeses, charcuterie, dips and other snacks can be delivered to your room on request.

Location

Photos Oasyhotel location
Address
Oasyhotel
Via Ximenes 662
San Marcello Piteglio (PT)
51028
Italy

Oasyhotel sits unobtrusively amid the tree-clad slopes of the Dynamo Oasis Nature Reserve, whose leafy majesty spreads over 2,400 acres. Set within Tuscany’s Pistoiese Apennines, the terrain has its ups and downs, but in picturesque fashion.

Planes

You can take your pick of three airports: the drive is around 90 minutes from both Florence’s Amerigo Vespucci Airport or Pisa; and Bologna is two hours away. On request the hotel can arrange transfers in a minivan from €275 to €300 one-way.

Trains

Pistoia train station is around an hour’s drive away from the hotel and you can ride the rail straight here from Florence Santa Maria Novella. Minivan transfers can be arranged for €200 one-way, including VAT. San Mommè is also close by, a 40-minute drive away.

Automobiles

A word of warning — it’s a long, winding, and ascending road that leads to the hotel’s door. Vertigo-sufferers should plan accordingly. Hotel staff will navigate the trickiest part for you — leave your car at the free-for-guests carpark within the reserve boundaries and they’ll shuttle you around the hairpin bends on the 25-minute drive to the main hotel.

Other

Descend rather than drive into the lodge in a chartered helicopter. You’ll need to liaise with the hotel beforehand and they can help to arrange.

Worth getting out of bed for

That irrepressible tide of greenery that seductively surges into view from your lodge window says ‘come and play’. Start with a get-your-bearings jaunt on the e-bikes provided, or take a gentle wellness walk through the woods — a map in your room points out trees with the best bioenergetic energy and forest-bathing potential. Use your homing skills to work your way back to the main lodge with supervised orienteering, or take bushcraft classes to hone your survival skills. 

This territory is shared with wilder beasts — it’s impressively biodiverse thanks to the efforts of the WWF and Oasi Dynamo Società Agricola. On a wildlife walk (by day or night) you may encounter herds of red, fallow and roe deer; wild boar; stone martens; porcupines; foxes, and birds of prey — or an elusive wolf. The lake is set up for paddleboarding and kayaking; there are peaks to conquer on-site and a tennis court to play on; and horses from the stables can be saddled up for scenic trots. You can learn more about the hotel’s agricultural efforts (and get hands-on with cheese-making, animal feeding, beekeeping and more) with a visit to the farm, or indulge your inner Italian-food lover with a cookery workshop. At day’s end, look up for a tour of the stars with a guide and a strong telescope. And do pay a visit to the Dynamo Camp for an enlightening and heart-warming look into how it brings light into the lives of chronically ill and/or disabled children, their parents and siblings, for free. If you’re so inspired, you could volunteer. 

Local restaurants

Unless you’re a die-hard forager, you’ll probably rely on the hotel’s talented chef to feed you in this remote locale. 

Reviews

Photos Oasyhotel reviews
Morwenna Ferrier

Anonymous review

By Morwenna Ferrier , Fashion editor

As I sit outside our cabin among the long grass, the view takes me further into the mountains or down into the valley below. Everything is still. Here in the Apennines, there is peace. 

Somewhere out in this landscape, there are wolves and if you focus hard enough, you might just hear them calling, even if it’s just your imagination playing tricks on you.

For over half a century, no-one came to this vast tract of pristine mountain wilderness, 1,100 metres above sea level, on the border of Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna. 

The area’s most powerful family and main employer owned it and used it as a hunting ground. They had a metal company that made bullets during the Second World War and a large holiday home up the mountain path that today leads to the hotel. The home was situated on the edge of the pathway, so the paterfamilias could shoot deer from his front porch.

After the war, the company was no more and the area became a WWF-affiliated nature reserve, most of which was off-limits to human beings. Now, there is also a hotel, the Oasy, which sits in almost 2,500 acres of the nature reserve. 

It is clear from arrival that things are a little different here. You leave your car at the gate of the reserve and get into a Land Cruiser, which takes you 25 minutes up into the mountains and to a collection of 16 lodges, dotted around the hillside overlooking a main reception building, a bar and a restaurant, which serves breakfast, lunch and dinner.

This is fortunate: the 25-minute shuttle means the idea of leaving to go out for a meal isn’t always hugely appealing and, though there is another restaurant in the reserve, it wasn’t open when we visited in April. 

The food is wholesome, Alpine almost. Fresh ricotta from the farm next door, still-warm pastries, but also the sort of standardised Western fare that we’ve come to expect from a five-star hotel. Pancakes. Eggs four ways. 

The produce is almost entirely local, some of it coming from within the grounds of the reserve itself. The Tuscan food — boar ragù, larded pork fillet, ribollita with mountain herbs — is perfect for the setting. We ate at the restaurant every night for four nights and it didn’t get boring. The wine selection is vast. The service is speedy, polite and mellow; most of the staff are local residents. 

The lodges nestle invisibly within the wooded hillside. They are made with nature in mind, somewhere between glamping and Scandinavian cabins. Everything can be dismantled at a moment’s notice, but they are comfortable and everything — WiFi included — works. 

If you want to do more than be at one with the mountain, though, you have come to the right place. Once in situ, an array of amenities — all included in your room charge — were available. The revelation, for us, even with two young children, were the electric mountain bikes. On these, you can travel for tens of kilometres around the nature reserve, through forests and out onto open pieces of upland that present you with glorious views of the hills and mountains around you.

A man-made lake contains a natural swimming pool — though this was closed when we were there because of a recent storm — and a fleet of kayaks. The lake is not big, but there’s enough space to kayak around. The hotel’s other restaurant is further down the trail from the lake. 

The other standout activity is the wildlife tour. Kind and knowledgeable hotel guides lead you through the reserve in search of wild boar, deer, birds and wolves. Those wolves are hardly ever seen and rarely heard, but we saw their tracks on our tour and at one other point during our stay. The chance to engage with the natural world in this way, even if it doesn’t result in jaw-dropping encounters, is profound, and speaks to what is so special about the hotel, which is the opportunity it gives you to become one with the environment.

Other activities, including cheese-making and children’s crafts, are available — some are included in the room rate. That rate, which on paper can seem daunting, is justifiable in a way that almost no other hotel’s rate is, because not only does it include so many extras — kayaks, electric bikes and much more — it also places you in the heart of a truly special place.

Today, claims of uniqueness are everywhere. In a world where new discoveries are hard to come by, or where everything has been done before, the appeal of the unique is obvious, but its use is rarely merited.

This is particularly true when it comes to travel. Discover the undiscovered. See what has never been seen. Stay somewhere like nowhere else. Almost always, these claims are unfounded. There is little that has not been discovered or seen. And when it comes to places to stay, so often they’re offering nothing more than expensive branding.

To be enfolded in the atmosphere of Oasyhotel and its nature reserve, though, is to feel something truly unique. Peace in the Apennines. May it last.

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Price per night from $669.72