While
for many, the purpose of renting a villa is to not do anything specifically,
have no set itinerary, I was eager to get my bearings, and renting a car or
a driver is essential. No sooner had I set my bags down, was I ready to
adjust into local mode, not only quickly learning the pragmatic use of
shutters as a howling wind storm swept across the valley the first evening,
but in the absolute mobility the villa afforded me. Within an hour’s drive I
had the best Umbria had to offer: the university town of Perugia and Assisi,
both contributing much religious culture to the Italian art scene, and the
smaller, less spoiled towns of Todi, Spoleto and Orvieto. Rome, Siena and
Florence are each within two hours’ drive, making for easy day trips and
hiking, horseback riding, wine tasting (especially of the regional favorite
Montefalco Sagratine) and a schedule of summer concerts can all be arranged.
We grabbed our map and planned our day’s itinerary.
The sun campaigned hard to beat through the clouds, but to no avail as our
first full day was spent visiting Umbria’s capital, Perugia, one of the
original 12 Etruscan lucumonies (city states) from the 6th and 7th centuries
B.C., and more importantly, home of those famous baci chocolates. Another
hour west, Assisi, home to Italy’s patron saint, St. Francis and Giotto’s
famed frescoes of the Basilica di San Francesco rounded out a day of
sightseeing, returning us to the villa in time for a quick dip in the pool
and a trip into neighboring Monte di Castello, to fetch Sunday morning
provisions: frusca, a loaf of chewy bread akin to the French batard, milk
and eggs. My advice: Go as local as possible. Being a bit of an anomaly in
town pays off as the kindness of strangers produces the friendliest results,
perhaps in procuring some of the morning’s fresh produce or a link or two of
a proud butcher’s hand-cured prosciutto.
For an additional fee, WIMCO can arrange for a cook, butler, maid or child
care. Insisting that Josephina take her well-deserved Sunday off, we took
advantage of the region’s seasonality and Umbria’s bounty. Menus around Todi
were ripe with fresh porchetta, roast piglet stuffed with rosemary, and
fagiano all’uva, pheasant cooked with grapes. In autumn, the tartufo, the
prized white truffle that permeates the air, is blissfully inescapable,
found in risottos, atop pizzas, and the shining star of the local specialty,
strengozzi al tartufo, an elegant, uncomplicated pasta dish, especially at
the Antica Hosteria de la Valle (via Ciuffelli 19, Todi), a tiny trattoria
of just eight tables where taking the recommendations of the owner, who was
just finishing Sunday supper with the famiglia, resulted in one of my most
memorable dinners ever.
But then, such experiences were exactly what I had come hoping to find. The
freedom of a private world that runs according to my own agenda was, in the
end, exactly in order. If the villa bug bites hard, take pleasure in knowing
that every subsequent holiday can be taken in a different villa, for each
has its own storied past with its own perspective, mood, patina and décor;
or one can return year after year to the same villa, adopting it as another
home.
On our last night, we curled up in the window seat of the bibliotheca to a
full moon, crystalline sky and a twinkling Todi. Between sips of the local
Montefalco, we swapped our own versions of
Villa Monti’s past life,
imagining what a convivial, cozy family gathering would be arriving in a few
months for the holidays, or whose it would be the following week. At
least—if but for a few days—it was still all ours.
BIO: Based in San Francisco, Megan Pickett is the editor in chief of
Hotel Bel-Air
magazine, published by Modern Luxury Magazines. Her work has appeared in
Chicago Social, Angeleno and DailyCandy among other magazines. Previously, she was senior
editor at Chicago Social in Chicago and features editor at Hong Kong Tatler in Hong
Kong, PRC.
