For the Love of Italy: Rural Pleasures and Hotel Estates

From grand views and romantic hillside villas to sprawling gardens and alfresco dinners, Italy offers its most authentic self through its landscape and its food. For the Love of Italy celebrates Italy’s countryside and the farm-to-table movement with vivid profiles and luscious photography of twenty-two spectacular agriturismi, or hospitable farming estates. Each is inextricably connected to the Italian agricultural tradition and to the most simple of daily routines and pleasures. All will delight visitors with lovely accommodations and unforgettable graciousness.
 
Marella Caracciolo, who has written extensively about travel in Italy from both sides of the Atlantic, and renowned photographer Oberto Gili present a sensual journey in this  evocative collection of diverse landscapes, unmatched architecture, and local gastronomic traditions. One can stay at a Renaissance villa estate with breathtaking views, where biodynamic wine is produced, or at a unique luxury hotel in the prehistoric dwellings of Basilicata, where visitors sleep, bathe, and eat by candlelight. Families visiting Villa la Foce and the nearby thirteenth-century farmhouse in southern Tuscany, will discover exquisite gardens, a swimming pool, a tree house—and meals inspired by the bounty of the enormous vegetable garden and orchards. Caracciolo describes in transporting prose the colorful history and seasonal rhythms of these and nineteen other estates. And in Gili’s photography the interiors, architecture, and gardens unfold with charm and grace.
 
Whether one wants to learn traditional pasta making, sip Brunello right where it’s made, or wander an ancient orangerie and then take a nap, these delightful farms promise unique and spectacular trips—or the fantasy of one.
 
With a resource section that will be indispensable for anyone planning a trip to an agriturismo, For the Love of Italy is a portrait of an irresistible country and an enviable way of life.

Marella Caracciolo was the Italian editor at House and Garden for twelve years and writes regularly for W and World of Interiors. She is the author of several books on Italian and Mediterranean villas and gardens, including Niki de Saint Phalle and the Tarot Garden, and a novel, The Light In Between. She is married to the artist Sandro Chia with whom she has two daughters. They live in Rome and at Castello Romitorio, their wine estate where they welcome tourists throughout the year.
 
Oberto Gili’s work is regularly featured in Town & Country; Travel & Leisure; and British, Spanish, and American Vogue, among other publications. Gili, the author of Luxury of Space, divides his time among  New York, Rome, and his own cheese farm and agriturismo in Bra, Italy.