Borgo Santo Pietro

A Danish couple bought a ruined thirteenth-century pilgrims' villa south-west of Siena and spent years rebuilding it, then kept going and turned the surrounding land into a genuinely productive farm. The result is twenty-two individually designed rooms and suites in the main house and outbuildings, surrounded by formal gardens, orchards, beehives, a dairy and vegetable plots that supply the kitchens.

Food is central. The estate runs a Michelin-starred restaurant alongside more relaxed options, and much of what appears has travelled a few hundred metres at most. There is also a spa with its own skincare line made from estate botanicals, a cookery school, and a sailing yacht operated by the same owners off the Tuscan coast.

The setting is the Val di Merse, a quieter and greener corner of Tuscany than the Val d'Orcia, with the roofless Gothic abbey of San Galgano a short drive away. Siena is about forty minutes, the coast a little over an hour.