Luxury villas for rent in Florence and its hills

What the houses here are like

Florentine villas have a different pedigree from farmhouses: they are patrician residences and gentlemen’s country houses, with formal Italian gardens, lemon houses and period interiors alongside contemporary comforts. Many face the city: the pool with a view of the Duomo genuinely exists, and it is one of the most memorable experiences Tuscany can offer.

Book with the people who manage the houses directly

Tripcare, a luxury villa property-management company in Tuscany, manages every house in this area directly. Tripcare manages every villa directly and knows Florentine logistics: the ZTL restricted zone, parking, the right museum hours. Our concierge books skip-the-line Uffizi and Accademia tickets, private guides, restaurant tables and in-villa chefs; and for those who want more, Chianti and the Val d’Elsa begin half an hour from your door.

Where to stay in Firenze

Fiesole

Five kilometres from Florence and three hundred metres above it: Etruscan before it was Roman, with the Roman theatre still in use each summer for the Estate Fiesolana — performances have been staged up there since 1911. It is the best-connected base in Tuscany for anyone who would rather not drive: the number 7 bus reaches piazza Mino roughly every twenty minutes, from six in the morning until past midnight, and keeps you out of the restricted traffic zone entirely. In exchange it is not deep countryside: it is a town looking down on the city, with the prices that implies.

Impruneta

Florence’s own ridge, at 275 metres, and a town that still works the material it is named for: cotto dell’Impruneta, the iron-rich clay known since at least the eleventh century and traditionally credited on Brunelleschi’s dome. The basilica dates to 1060. Two dates are worth travelling for: the Festa dell’Uva on the last Sunday of September, with floats built by the town’s four districts since 1926, and the Fiera di San Luca in mid-October, among the oldest livestock fairs in Europe.

Mugello

North of Florence, along the Sieve, where Tuscany starts turning into the Apennines: greener, cooler and far less travelled. There are two UNESCO-listed Medici villas, Cafaggiolo and Il Trebbio, both reworked by Michelozzo in the fifteenth century, the Scarperia knives that have been made here for five centuries, and Lake Bilancino with its equipped beaches in summer. One thing to know in advance: the Mugello racing circuit is here, and on the MotoGP weekend each spring the whole valley is full.

Rufina e la Val di Sieve

The answer for anyone who has already done Chianti Classico: this is where Chianti Rùfina is made, the smallest of the Chianti sub-zones by area under vine — under a thousand hectares across five municipalities, and some twenty producers in all. The greater altitude and more continental climate give tauter, longer-lived wines. At the end of September comes the Bacco Artigiano, when the Carro Matto — fifteen hundred flasks drawn by Chianina oxen — processes all the way down into Florence.

Bagno a Ripoli

The countryside Florence turns into the moment the city ends: seven kilometres from the centre, terraced olive groves and villas, without a real square to walk down to. The advantage is the proximity, and the fact that the city bus lines reach here — you go into the centre by bus, never going near the restricted traffic zone. Gino Bartali was born at Ponte a Ema, and the cycling museum devoted to him is there: for anyone travelling with bikes, that detail changes the decision.