Experiences & Surroundings · A field guide
Nothing here needs booking in advance, and nothing is more than an hour away. This is how the days tend to go — sketched, not scheduled.
From the gate
Coffee at the bar in the piazza, two minutes on foot. Bread from the bakery for the house.
Walk into the Monterano Nature Reserve — 1,800 hectares of woods and gorges, and inside them the ghost town of ancient Monterano: the aqueduct, the lion fountain and the convent ruins attributed to Bernini, a film set since the fifties.
Back through the gate. A swim before dinner, the barbecue lit in the courtyard.
Ten minutes to Lake Bracciano: swimming from the black-sand shores, sailing, or the Orsini-Odescalchi castle above the town.
Lakeside lunch in Trevignano or Anguillara, then the hot springs of Stigliano — warm since Roman times, under the trees.
Dinner at the trattoria in the village. The walk home ends at your own gate.
Forty-five minutes by car or thirty-five by train, and Rome is yours for the day. Or head the other way: beaches and seafront restaurants at Santa Marinella and Santa Severa, with its castle standing on the water.
For the unhurried: Tolfa, Sutri, the gardens of Vignanello, the stone monsters of Bomarzo — half-day drives through countryside that stays green all year.
The long table in the courtyard, laid for sixteen. The village keeps its distance; the evening is yours.
Notes from the house
At check-in we leave you our honest list — where the villagers actually eat, and when the bakery pulls the bread out.