Villa Lucca

Villa Lucca is among the grandest private residences available for rental in Tuscany. Built in 1750 for a noble family from Lucca, the villa sits within a 20-acre estate in the Lucchesian hills, surrounded by ancient oak woods and a formal park designed in the English landscape style in the 19th century. The estate includes a private lake, an orangery, a chapel, and the kind of architectural scale - a ballroom, a gallery, a library - that belongs to a different era of private wealth. The main house contains eight bedrooms on two upper floors, each individually decorated with period furniture, antique textiles, and marble bathrooms. The principal suite occupies the entire piano nobile wing, with frescoed ceilings, a sitting room, and a bathroom that was once the villa's dressing room, retaining its original mirrors and gilded plasterwork. The ballroom, spanning the full width of the ground floor, seats 40 for dinner and has hosted concerts, weddings, and corporate retreats. The orangery, a glass-fronted pavilion built to shelter citrus trees during the Lucchesian winters, now functions as a secondary dining room and event space. Its terracotta floor, iron columns, and rows of potted lemon and orange trees give it a romantic atmosphere that is particularly effective for evening dinners lit by candles. The grounds are the villa's equal. The formal park leads through avenues of plane trees to the private lake, stocked with carp and surrounded by weeping willows. A 20-metre pool, built in a walled garden to the south of the house, is heated and available from April through October. Tennis courts, a bocce lawn, and a network of walking paths through the oak woods complete the outdoor amenities. Lucca, one of Tuscany's best-preserved walled cities, is 15 minutes by car. Its Renaissance walls, now a tree-lined promenade, encircle a centro storico of medieval towers, Romanesque churches, and excellent restaurants. Pisa and its airport are 30 minutes west; Florence is an hour east by motorway.