By Emma Bird
On a hill a few miles outside Florence, where cypress avenues cut through olive groves, a long-shuttered villa has reopened its doors to a new chapter of Tuscan living. Villa Capponi, once a retreat for some of Tuscany’s most powerful families, has been restored after decades of seclusion, emerging as 14 residences that marry storied aristocratic grandeur with modern ease.
For much of the 20th century, the villa lay hidden from view, occupied by an order of cloistered nuns. Their quiet presence shielded the property from the kind of heavy-handed modernisation that transformed many Italian estates. When architect-developer Dmitry Kulish first visited in 2014, he found faded frescoes, neglected gardens and the proportions of a Renaissance villa largely untouched. “For some 70 years it had been occupied by cloistered nuns,” he says. “In a way that saved it. There were no major alterations.”
The villa’s story stretches back to the Middle Ages, when the estate at Querceto was recorded as a property of the Tosinghi, one of Florence’s oldest noble families. Over time it passed through several hands before being acquired by the Capponi in the late 18th century. Members of the wider Capponi lineage include Pier Capponi, the Florentine statesman who famously faced down Charles VIII of France with the retort: “If you sound your trumpets, we will ring our bells.”
Under Capponi ownership, the old Tosinghi estate was transformed from its medieval origins into a villa of noble refinement. The gardens were expanded and formalised, the facades decorated in the Florentine graffito style of etched plaster, and the interiors enriched with frescoes and carved limestone busts that still characterise the property today.
A six-year restoration revealed a rare fresco attributed to the Medici court painter Jacopo Chiavistelli, whose work adorns Palazzo Pitti in Florence. Concealed for decades beneath convent lime wash, the fresco, which is about 70 square metres, was discovered on the exterior wall of the villa’s former church, where it was designed to trick the eye into seeing an extension of the gardens.
None of the 14 turnkey residences are identical. On the main floor, the villa’s showpiece apartment, Conti Capponi, has two ornate bedrooms and retains its frescoes, vaulted-coffered ceilings and stone fireplaces. A grand stairway leads directly from the living area on to the formal gardens. On the ground floor, the two-bedroom Tosinghi apartment retains the villa’s original kitchen with its grey pietra serena stone columns — a hallmark of Florentine architecture — along with a frescoed bathroom and a bath carved from a single block of Carrara marble.
Other apartments are set within the former limonaia, the ornate lemon house, with tall windows and double-height ceilings giving a modern lightness to spaces finished with Carrara marble, Savio parquet and Italian-made fittings. From the upper floors, some apartments look towards the Duomo’s dome, while below, terraces spill towards the wooded valley of Sesto Fiorentino. Prices range from €600,000 to €2.6mn, depending on size and position within the estate.
Beyond the formal English and Italian gardens are olive groves and vineyards with paths leading to an outdoor yoga platform, meditation lawn and stargazing terrace. These details along with the spa, gym and grotto-style pool bring today’s notions of luxury and wellbeing to a centuries-old historic home.
Photography: Knight Frank
