Bertinoro, Forlì-Cesena, Emilia-Romagna, Italy

CONTEMPLATIVE STILLNESS IN STONE AND FLOWING WATER

The hills of Romagna have a particular quality of light in the early evening - warm, unhurried, the kind that makes you forget what you were supposed to be doing. This Stonewater Sanctuary sits in that light, on a low hill above Forlimpopoli, two kilometres from the medieval borgo of Bertinoro, and it has been doing so since the 17th century.
The estate was built on - and named after - an ancient Roman thermal site along the Via Consolare. Consuls once stopped here. The instinct to pause, to restore, to take the long view across the plain to the Adriatic, seems to be written into the land itself.
The main villa, restored with patience and an evident commitment to quality, moves across three floors without ever feeling rushed. Ground floor rooms flow into one another in the way old Italian houses do at their best - salon with fireplace, formal dining room, a kitchen that opens directly onto a loggia with an outdoor table and a brick barbecue that has clearly seen serious use. A self-contained guesthouse sits discreetly within the structure, with its own entrance should privacy be preferred.
Upstairs, seven bedrooms occupy the first floor, anchored by two principal suites with walk-in closets and bathrooms finished with Jacuzzi and shower. Two of the smaller rooms connect internally - useful, and quietly considered. The attic holds one final room, alone above everything, with the kind of silence that is increasingly hard to find.
What distinguishes this estate from others of comparable scale is the annex - a contemporary building reached from the main villa through a vaulted underground tunnel. The transition is deliberate: stone, shadow, then the sudden arrival into a room built around a 60 m² indoor pool, mosaic-lined, heated, with large windows that look out across the garden and the outdoor pool beyond. A bar, lounge areas and a gym; a sauna and Turkish bath; a professional kitchen. The annex works as a self-contained world, and the tunnel connecting it to the 17th-century villa is, in its way, the most honest summary of what this property is: two centuries in conversation.
Outside, a 120 m² pool occupies the formal garden, reached from the rose garden above by a marble staircase with water flowing along both sides. The 1.4-hectare park is Italian garden design done with genuine care - linden avenues, fountains, terraced viewpoints, the Adriatic visible on clear days. Nearly 10 hectares of vineyard and agricultural land extend beyond, currently leased, with room to develop further.
This is Emilia-Romagna at its most considered: the food, the landscape, the light, and now, available for the right custodian, one of its finest private estates.
Forlì Airport is twelve minutes away, Bologna is just over an hour and the Adriatic coast is twenty.