Carved into the Langhe hillside above Santo Stefano Belbo, the seventeenth-century monastery that became Relais San Maurizio is so thoroughly enveloped by Moscato and Barolo vines that the aerial view makes the buildings seem less like architecture and more like a natural outcropping of the landscape. The conversion preserved the monastic bones — barrel-vaulted ceilings, terracotta floors, stone fireplaces in blackened marble — while layering in the domestic warmth of a Piedmontese country house. Guest rooms across the complex's several interconnected buildings range from vaulted chambers furnished with gilded mirrors, Persian kilims, and wingback armchairs in burnt sienna to lighter, neoclassical-style rooms with grey-painted carved headboards, velvet cushions in blush and sage, and tall draped windows looking out over the vine rows. The elliptical pool pavilion visible from above — an arched arcade in painted render that sits low against the slope — is the one contemporary gesture on the property, its mosaic-tiled basin framed by woven daybed loungers and dark rattan sun chairs against an uninterrupted Langhe panorama. The dining terrace extends from the main house on a timber deck, orange-clothed tables shaded by white cantilever umbrellas, the undulating vineyard hills of the UNESCO-listed Langhe-Monferrato-Roero landscape rolling to the horizon in every direction. The effect is closer to a working estate that receives guests than a hotel that has dressed itself in rural costume.

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