Vittoria Ferragamo jokes that when her grandmother, Wanda Miletti Ferragamo, first started to think about opening her Tuscan estate, Viesca, to the public some decades ago, she wanted to get involved with hospitality. But, she says, “she just didn’t really want to have guests.”
She was incredibly selective about whom she would invite, as Viesca was always—above all—her private family oasis. The Renaissance estate was the first country home that Wanda bought with her famous shoemaker husband, Salvatore, in the 1950s, and it remained a sort of sanctuary for her throughout her life. It was a place where she would gather her 6 children and 24 grandchildren; a place where peace and tranquility would reign supreme; a place where guests would “feel hugged by the trees,” as her granddaughter says.
She continued to take care of it until her death in 2018. After that, one of her sons, Ferruccio, became more serious about welcoming guests, renovating the villas and the smaller farmhouses on the grounds, which once accommodated the families of the agricultural workers. In all, they created 8 private villas, an independent family cottage, and 20 guest suites that still feel more like the rooms of a family home than tourist accommodations.
This means that there are far more lavish places to stay in Tuscany. Many other aristocratic or wealthy families have quite understandably succumbed to the enormous financial pressure of maintaining a historic estate and sold their homes to private equity, capital funds or multinational conglomerates, who signed deals with big-name management companies. (The results are unsurprisingly opulent.)
Some of these partnerships have resulted in positively dreamy places to stay. But what Viesca offers is something different. It feels more like a stay at your grandparents’ house—if Grandpa were one of the most influential Italian designers of the 20th century and Grandma were a formidable woman who ran the household and the company as a widow for decades, at a time and place where it was still rare to find women in such leadership roles.
The summer 2025 season, which ended a few weeks ago, saw the opening of the newly added Villa Gelso. But the estate’s centerpiece is Villa Viesca, the 16th-century manor house Wanda called home and the one her grandchildren spent parts of their holidays in. On a tour of the property, Vittoria—today an avid horsewoman—points out the wooden rocking horse that she and her cousins played on as children, now serving as part of the decoration of one of the bath suites.
The entire place, whose eight bedrooms can be rented individually or combined as an exclusive villa, feels like time travel into the family home of an extraordinary family. There are first editions in the library, framed personal photos at every turn, vintage linens in Ferragamo prints and original wallpaper. The renovation revealed luminous frescoes in a ballroom; the grown-in gardens, rosebushes and olive trees needed no intervention. Like all the villas on the 173-acre estate, it has a private infinity pool and a large terra-cotta terrace for alfresco dining.
The standard guest rooms have a somber simplicity and elegant stillness. Their antique furniture is complemented by sweeping views of the estate, its gardens and orchards, and, in the distance, the Chianti hills, home to some of Italy’s most notable producers. Vintage sketches of early shoe designs serve as decorative inspiration, but nothing is overdone.
And really, the rooms are mostly for sleeping. The grounds are beguiling, with their meadows and gardens, shared swimming pool and central dining terrace. Since last year, the restaurant has been an outpost of the family’s more famous gentleman-farmer brand, Il Borro, Borro, a restaurant and Relais & Châteaux hotel centered on an extensive garden.
It skews playful and festive, with twice-weekly pizza nights, where even the wheat and olive oil for the dough comes from Il Borro’s organic gardens, and chef-led cooking classes. These feature many of Wanda’s own recipes, such as grilled eggplant stuffed with meatballs in tomato sauce, or an eggy flan speckled with spinach.
They’ve also developed a slew of countryside activities—cycling, walking through the vineyards and the like—and wellness in the form of a small spa and skilled practitioner who leads yoga sessions and sound healing. The crystal singing bowls were certainly not part of the estate’s 13th-century origins, nor even of its mid-20th-century evolution into a bastion of Ferragamo-style good taste and (now fully inclusive) hospitality. But they serve as a calming complement to what is already a sublimely peaceful environment, a refuge where Tuscan nature has been closely intertwined with family heritage for decades.