Historic Villas for Memorable Stays

Renting a whole villa changes the trip. The hosts hand over keys, you cook your own breakfast, and the building stops being a hotel and starts being your house for the week. The best properties have a history that predates the tourism industry: they were built for a family, adapted over centuries, and converted with enough restraint that the original rooms still feel like rooms rather than suites. A few favourites.

Italy

Villa Lena, Tuscany

Late 19th-century estate above Palaia, run partly as an artist residency. The pool is in the old olive grove. The main villa has high ceilings, terrazzo floors, and a salon with an open fireplace that the staff light every evening. The artist residency occupies a separate building, and guests can visit the studios, attend openings, or simply watch the painters work in the garden. The estate produces its own wine and olive oil, and the restaurant menu changes according to what the garden is producing. The location is rural enough to feel remote but close enough to Pisa and Florence for day trips by car.

Borgo Santo Pietro, Tuscany

Closer to luxury hotel than villa but operates like a private estate. The farm supplies most of the kitchen. The property is a restored 13th-century villa near Chiusdino, with 13 hectares of gardens, a working farm, and a spa built into the old cellars. The rooms are individually decorated with antiques and fabrics sourced from local markets, and the restaurant has its own bakery, butchery, and cheese cave. The atmosphere is deliberately domestic: guests are encouraged to treat the drawing rooms and libraries as their own, and the staff address you by name from the first evening. The garden is formal in the Italian style, with parterres, fountains, and a maze.

Baglio Sorìa, Sicily

A baglio is a fortified Sicilian wine estate, built around a courtyard with thick walls to protect against pirates and heat. This one is on the Trapani coast and produces some of the best Grillo on the island. The rooms are in the old farmhouse wing, with stone floors, vaulted ceilings, and windows that look out over the vineyard to the sea. The estate has been in the same family for four generations, and the current generation runs the winery tastings personally. The coast here is less developed than near Palermo: the beaches are public, the seafood restaurants are family-run, and the pace is recognisably western Sicilian.

France

Château La Verrerie, Berry

Renaissance château by a private lake. The current Marquis and his family still live in part of it. The main wing is available for private hire, with seven bedrooms, a grand salon with original parquet, and a dining room that seats sixteen. The lake is stocked, the park was laid out in the 18th century, and the chapel on the grounds still holds services. The region, the Berry, is flat agricultural country south of the Loire that most tourists drive through without stopping. The château is the reason to pause: it is not a hotel, there is no spa, and the experience is closer to borrowing a friend's country house than to a luxury stay.

Bastide de Marie, Provence

Restored 18th-century farmhouse in the Luberon. You can book the whole estate or a single room. The bastide sits among 15 hectares of vineyard and orchard, and the main house has been converted with a mix of provençal antiques and modern comfort. The kitchen garden supplies the restaurant, the wine is from the estate's own vines, and the pool is positioned to catch the evening light on the Monts de Vaucluse. The Luberon is one of the more beautiful parts of Provence, and the nearby villages - Ménerbes, Bonnieux, Lacoste - are all within a short drive. The property works best for groups who want to cook, swim, and eat without leaving the grounds.

Spain

Finca Cortesin, Andalusia

Closer to a small resort than a villa, with private pools attached to each suite and an estate large enough to lose yourself in. The architecture is deliberately Andalusian: white walls, terracotta roofs, courtyards with fountains, and interiors that use local marble and timber. The golf course is among the best in Spain, but the property works equally well for non-golfers: the spa is extensive, the beach club is a short shuttle away, and the suites are large enough to feel like apartments. The location, between Marbella and Sotogrande, is convenient without being overdeveloped. The service is attentive in the old-fashioned sense: staff remember preferences and anticipate requests without being obtrusive.

Greece

Aristi Mountain Resort, Zagori

In the stone villages of Zagorohoria. Traditional architecture, modern bathrooms, mountains in every window. The region is a cluster of 46 villages in the Pindus mountains of north-west Greece, linked by stone paths and arched bridges built in the 17th and 18th centuries. Aristi is one of the larger villages, and the resort occupies a group of restored stone houses at the edge of the settlement, with views down the Vikos Gorge. The gorge is one of the deepest in the world relative to its width, and the walking trails along its rim are well marked and rarely crowded. The rooms use local stone and wood, the food isEpirotic rather than generic Greek, and the atmosphere is mountain rather than beach.

Morocco

L'Hôtel Marrakech

Jasper Conran's project. Five suites only, in a property hidden behind the souk. The kind of stay that ruins you for normal hotels. The building is a 19th-century riad that Conran restored himself, keeping the original tilework, plaster carving, and cedar ceilings but adding furniture and fabrics from his own collections. The courtyard is planted with jasmine and orange trees, the pool is long enough to swim laps, and the salon serves afternoon tea on silver trays. The location in the northern medina means you are inside the old city rather than in a modern annex outside the walls. The five suites vary in size but share the same attention to detail: embroidered linens, marble bathrooms, and views over the rooftops to the Atlas Mountains.