Stay at Lapis Turris, Le Marche

Villa overview

Lapis Turris was built in the eleventh century to watch a valley, and it still does exactly that. The tower stands on a rocky spur inside the Monti Sibillini National Park, in the province of Fermo, and the restoration has divided it into two separate apartments across 250 square metres. Seven guests sleep in proper beds, with two more on the sofa-bed in the ground floor apartment. That structure matters more than it sounds. Two families, or two couples, or a group of friends can share the same four hectares of terraced hillside and still close a door at the end of the evening. The stone walls stayed. The glass dome above the top floor bedroom did not exist in the eleventh century, and it is the reason guests tell me they stopped sleeping with the shutters closed.

The grounds do the work here. The pool measures seven metres by two and a half, sits on a terrace cut into the hillside, and opens roughly from April to October. Below it there is a hot tub heated to thirty-two degrees that takes six people, an alfresco dining area, and a stone amphitheatre facing west. I have arranged a great many aperitivi in Italia and I struggle to name a better place to hold one at seven in the evening in late September. Both apartments have their own outdoor space: a courtyard cut into the slope on the ground floor, a sun terrace above it looking across to the hilltop village. Air conditioning is in every bedroom, underfloor heating runs throughout, and the Wi-Fi holds well enough that a small leadership group could actually work from the sun terrace, which several have.

I should tell you what does not suit this property. Lapis Turris is built on steep steps and terraced levels, which rules out young children and anyone with limited mobility. There is no getting around that, and I would rather say it now than after a deposit. The laundry sits in an external annexe that the gardener also uses. A car is not optional: the nearest village is four kilometres away, the closest ristorante four and a half, and Ancona and Perugia airports are both around 120 kilometres. Guests who understand this arrive with the fridge stocked and stay put. A cook and maid service are available on request, and for groups I usually recommend both.

The walking starts at the gate. The Gola dell’Infernaccio, the gorge the river cut through the rock, leads to a waterfall and then to the hermitage of San Leonardo al Volubrio, still reached only on foot. The Santuario della Madonna dell’Ambro has drawn Marian pilgrims for centuries and holds work by painters most visitors have never heard of. Amandola, nine kilometres down in the valley, is where you eat: funghi, pecorino, and tartufo from the hills above you. San Ruffino Lake sits at the foot of the mountains. Ascoli Piceno is forty-two kilometres, one of the most elegant travertine cities in Italia, and the place to order olive all’ascolana where they were invented. Norcia is sixty-five kilometres over the Umbrian border. The Adriatic beaches at Pedaso are fifty-five, Alba Adriatica seventy-nine.