Strung across a hillside in the Val d'Orcia near Chiusdino, a thirteenth-century hamlet of stone farmhouses, olive groves, and cypress-lined drives was quietly transformed into one of Tuscany's most romantic retreats by Jeanette and Claus Thottrup, who acquired the estate in 2005 and spent years restoring it by hand. Borgo Santo Pietro now spreads across some fifty hectares of working land — vineyards, kitchen gardens, beehives — with the main villa, a neoclassical palazzetto built around 1800, anchoring a constellation of converted agricultural buildings whose terracotta-tiled roofs are visible from above as warm interruptions in the surrounding green. The interiors carry the feeling of a privately assembled Italian country house rather than a designed hotel, each room furnished differently with antique four-poster beds in carved walnut, crystal chandeliers suspended from exposed timber trusses, gilded Baroque headboards set against hand-painted botanical murals, and aged stone fireplaces framed by lace curtains in cream and ivory. Distressed plaster walls finished in chalky Tuscan tones run through the suites, grounded by worn travertine floors and patterned rugs. The restaurant, with its wide plank floors, rusted steel-framed windows opening onto rolling countryside, and hanging ironwork chandelier, achieves a particular atmosphere — sophisticated without formality. Outside, a curved natural stone pool terrace edged in terracotta amphorae and flowering Mediterranean planting completes the picture of an estate that has always looked exactly like this, even though it hasn't.

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