First floor, east facing
Sunlit Suite
€340per night
The room the villa is named for. Sunrise arrives at the foot of the bed and stays all morning.
- Sleeps
- 2 guests
- Bed
- One king bed
- Size
- 42 m²
Val d’Orcia · Tuscany · Italy
Villa of Golden Light
A serene Italian getaway with warm light and unforgettable views.
Guest rating
4.9 / 5
128 reviews
Capacity
Sleeps 11
Across 4 rooms
Connectivity
Fibre Wi-Fi
Every room and both terraces
Mornings
Breakfast included
Served 8am to 10am
01Rooms and rates
Four rooms, each with its own hour of the day
Filter by the room that suits you, or set your dates above and we will show you what is open across them.
Room type
Ground floor, steps from the lawn
Garden Room
€260per night
Cool, quiet and level with the garden. Our most-requested room in high summer.
- Sleeps
- 2 guests
- Bed
- One queen bed
- Size
- 30 m²
Top floor, private roof terrace
Terrace Loft
€410per night
The whole top floor, under the original beams, with a terrace kept for this room alone.
- Sleeps
- 3 guests
- Bed
- One king bed and a daybed
- Size
- 55 m²
Two connected rooms for families
Olive Wing
€520per night
A self-contained wing with its own door, for families who want a little separation.
- Sleeps
- 4 guests
- Bed
- One queen bed and two singles
- Size
- 68 m²
02Amenities
Everything the house actually has
No inflated list. These are the things you will use, described the way we would describe them to a friend on the phone.
01
Fibre Wi-Fi throughout
A fibre line reaches the house, with mesh points in every room and on both terraces. It holds a video call from the roof terrace, which we have tested more often than we would like to admit. There is no charge and no time limit.
02
Breakfast, included every morning
Served from eight until ten on the long table under the pergola, or in the kitchen if the weather turns. Bread and focaccia from the bakery in San Quirico, ricotta and pecorino from the farm at the bottom of the hill, fruit from the garden in season, eggs cooked to order, and coffee that keeps coming.
03
Salt-water pool
Twelve metres, cut into the second terrace so it sits level with the view rather than above it. Salt rather than chlorine, so it is kind to skin and eyes. Open from late April to early October, with towels in the pool house and no set hours.
04
Two hectares of garden and olive grove
A walled garden by the house, then terraces of lavender and rosemary dropping down to around two hundred olive trees. The oil pressed from them is on the breakfast table. You are welcome anywhere on the land, and the walk to the top of the grove takes about ten minutes.
05
Air conditioning and heating
Quiet split units in every bedroom, controlled from the room, with underfloor heating downstairs for spring and autumn stays. The stone walls do most of the work in summer, so most guests use the units only at night in July and August.
06
Free parking in the courtyard
Space for five cars inside the gate, shaded by the fig tree from the middle of the afternoon. The last four hundred metres of the approach is a well-kept gravel track, comfortable in any ordinary car.
07
Guest kitchen and wood oven
A full kitchen guests are free to use, plus a wood-fired oven in the courtyard that Marco lights on Thursday evenings for anyone who wants to eat together. Bring something from the market or just bring a glass.
08
Laundry and drying line
A washing machine and an iron in the utility room, free to use, with detergent provided. There is a proper line in the kitchen garden, which in this climate dries a wash in about two hours.
09
Sitting room and library
A cool room with an open fire for the evenings, shelves of books left behind by fifteen years of guests, a record player, and a decent map of the valley with the good walks marked on it in pencil.
10
Help from people who live here
Elena books the restaurants, the cellar visits and the cookery lessons, and will tell you honestly which ones are worth the drive. Airport transfers from Florence, Pisa or Rome can be arranged with a few days' notice.
03About the villa
A house that was built around the light, three hundred years before we got here
The steps down through the lavender terraces towards the olive grove.
01
Where it is, and what that means
The villa stands on a ridge above the Val d'Orcia, six kilometres from San Quirico and about forty minutes south of Siena. The valley is a protected landscape, which sounds bureaucratic and is in fact the whole point: no new building, no advertising along the roads, and a view from the terrace that is legally obliged to look the same in thirty years. What you hear at night is wind in the cypresses and, in early summer, an unreasonable number of nightingales.
02
A grain store that became a house
The oldest wall dates to around 1620, when this was a store for grain rather than a place to live. It became a farmhouse, then a working podere, then a ruin with an elder tree in the kitchen. Restoring it took fifteen years and a rule we set at the start: repair with what was here. The stone came from the collapsed outbuilding, the plaster is lime mixed on site, the beams are chestnut cut within the province, and the upstairs floors are the original boards, lifted and put back down in the same order.
03
Four rooms, on purpose
We could have fitted seven. Four means breakfast is one table rather than a service, that the pool never has a queue, and that we know your name by the second morning. It also means high season books a long way out, which we would rather tell you now than apologise for later. The house sleeps eleven in total, and taking all four rooms for a family or a group of friends is the way it works best.
04
What guests actually talk about
Not the pool, in the end, and not the bathrooms. What comes up in almost every message afterwards is the hour before sunset, when the sun drops under the ridge and the whole valley goes the colour the house is named for. People carry a glass up through the olive grove, sit on the wall at the top, and stop talking. Second on the list is breakfast, which routinely runs two hours. Third is Bruno, the cat, who is not ours, lives here anyway, and has been mentioned by name in a remarkable number of reviews.
04Gallery
Ten photographs, taken across one season
The house, the terraces and the valley, mostly in the hour either side of sunrise and sunset. Select any photograph to open it.
05From the journal
What we write down between guests
Notes on the valley, the kitchen and the seasons, written by the people who live here.
Guest Guides6 min read
A Perfect Day in the Val d'Orcia
One unhurried day, written the way we would actually spend it: two villages, one long lunch, and the walk that everybody photographs.
14 May 2026
Food & Wine5 min read
The Harvest Table: Eating with the Seasons
What is actually on the breakfast table in April, in July and in October, and why the olive harvest changes everything for a fortnight.
2 April 2026
Food & Wine4 min read
Learning to Make Pici with Adriana
Flour, water, and one afternoon. The pasta lesson we send guests to, and why it is harder and better than it sounds.
11 March 2026
06Nearby
Six places worth the drive, with honest travel times
Everything here is measured from our gate. Elena will book any of it for you, and will tell you plainly which ones need an early start.
Renaissance town
Pienza
A whole town rebuilt in five years to one architect's plan, and small enough to walk end to end in twenty minutes. Come for the wall path over the valley and the pecorino, and go early to beat the coaches.
12 km18 minutes by car
Thermal springs
Bagno Vignoni
The village square is a steaming stone pool built for the Medici. You cannot bathe in that one, but the free terraced pools below the village are open all year and best at dusk.
9 km14 minutes by car
Wine cellars
Montalcino
Home of Brunello, and the reason half our guests arrive with an empty suitcase. We book tastings at three small family estates that pour properly and do not rush you. Ask and we will arrange a driver.
24 km32 minutes by car
Tuesday morning market
San Quirico Market
Produce, cheese, porchetta cut to order and a van that sells nothing but socks. It runs from seven until about one, and it is the best possible way to assemble a lunch to bring back to the pergola.
6 km9 minutes by car
Walk from the gate
The Cypress Road
The line of cypress trees along a white gravel road that appears on every photograph of this region. You can reach it from our gate without touching a main road. Best in the hour before sunset.
3 km40 minutes on foot
Beach day trip
The Maremma Coast
The nearest proper sea, with long pine-backed beaches at Castiglione della Pescaia and rockier swimming around Talamone. A full day out rather than an afternoon, and worth it once in a week's stay.
95 km1 hour 40 by car
07Guest reviews
Rated 4.9 from 128 stays
Six of the notes guests have left us, kept as they were written.
“We have stayed in a lot of places that photograph well. This is the first one where the photographs undersold it. The light in the morning is genuinely something you remember afterwards.”
Hannah W.
Edinburgh, Scotland
Sunlit Suite · June 2026
“Elena reorganised our entire week after the weather turned, found us a cellar visit at two hours' notice and never once made it feel like a favour. That is the difference between a hotel and this.”
Thomas and Ines K.
Hamburg, Germany
Terrace Loft · September 2025
“Travelling with a four year old and a seven year old usually means compromising on somewhere beautiful. The Olive Wing meant we did not have to. Own door, own hours, and a cat who tolerated a great deal.”
Priya R.
Toronto, Canada
Olive Wing · August 2025
“I came for a week on my own to finish a manuscript and did more work in six days than in the previous two months. Fast internet, an enormous table nobody needs, and absolute quiet after nine.”
Daniel M.
Melbourne, Australia
Garden Room · April 2026
“We booked deliberately for the olive harvest and spent two afternoons under the nets with a rake. Coming back to bread and oil pressed that same week is not something you can arrange from a hotel.”
Clara and Jean-Paul B.
Lyon, France
Sunlit Suite · October 2025
“Breakfast lasted two hours every single morning and we never once felt hurried away. By the third day we were eating with the other guests. By the fifth we had swapped numbers with all of them.”
Sofia A.
Lisbon, Portugal
Terrace Loft · May 2026