Pienza, Val d’Orcia, Tuscany
A country house four kilometres outside Pienza that two sisters, Barbara and Sabrina, bought as a ruin in 1999 and rebuilt by hand over six years — soft colours, old oak floors, hand-painted tiles, and rooms that respect how houses here were always built. It looks out over the full sweep of the UNESCO-listed Val d’Orcia with a heated eighteen-metre pool, a synergic vegetable garden, and two kitchens that anchor long, convivial meals. This is the intimate end of a Tuscany wedding: the villa sleeps twelve across six bedrooms, rents whole by the week (Saturday to Saturday), and hosts small weddings of up to around sixty guests as an add-on to the stay. For couples who want a week in a family-made house with one golden evening at the centre of it — rather than a production — this is the one.
