Casale San Gimignano

Casale San Gimignano sits on a hilltop 3 kilometres from the town whose medieval towers make it one of the most recognisable silhouettes in Italy. The property is a converted casale - a Tuscan country house - with stone walls, a central loggia, and an unusual feature: a working saffron garden that produces the spice for which San Gimignano was famous in the Middle Ages and which has been revived by a handful of local producers in recent years. Four bedrooms occupy the upper floor, each with views either toward San Gimignano's towers or across the rolling vineyard landscape to the south. The master suite has a private terrace large enough for a breakfast table, perfectly oriented to catch the morning sun and the distant towers in the golden light that photographers travel across the world to capture. Bathrooms use local travertine and feature rainfall showers; the master has a freestanding tub by the window. The ground floor flows from the kitchen through the dining room to the loggia, which functions as the primary living and entertaining space from May through October. The loggia's stone arches frame the view of the towers so precisely that it feels staged - but it is simply centuries of architectural intuition about how to inhabit this landscape. The saffron garden, tended by a local farmer who visits twice weekly, blooms in late October. Guests staying during the harvest can participate in the delicate process of picking the crocus flowers at dawn and extracting the stigmas by hand. The chef incorporates the saffron into dishes throughout the year - risotto alla Milanese made with San Gimignano saffron is a house speciality. A 14-metre infinity pool sits on the western terrace, positioned so that swimmers face San Gimignano's towers across the valley. The property includes bicycles for the ride into town along a quiet country road. Volterra, the Etruscan hilltop city, is 25 minutes south; Siena is 40 minutes; Florence is an hour.