Borgo Finocchieto

Province of Siena, on the Via Francigena between the monastic stops of Monte Oliveto and Sant’Antimo. An eight-hundred-year-old hamlet bought in 2001 by John Phillips, an American of Italian ancestry who was United States Ambassador to Italy from 2013 to 2017, and restored over what the house calls a fastidious eight-year renovation. Danny Meyer became its sole owner in 2025. Five villas, twenty-two rooms, forty-four guests, taken entire. It is the clearest case in this Library of a village let as one house.

The house

The hamlet appears on a map of 1318 and stands about forty miles south of Siena, on the pilgrim road from Canterbury to Rome. It was once part of an estate held by the Borghese family, and as late as the 1960s twenty-one families lived in the manor house without indoor plumbing. By the time John Phillips saw it there were five dilapidated structures on about five acres. He bought them in 2001 in what he called a moment of irrational exuberance, and put the value of the finished property at about thirty million dollars, of which he said his own outlay was less than a third.

The restoration was run by Amalia Agnelli, a former head of the preservation committee in Buonconvento, with Karen Hartmann, a former Boston kitchen designer, as the borgo’s decorator. Roughly thirty thousand square feet were rebuilt: the manor house, a barn turned into a five-bedroom house, a chapel with four bedrooms and two two-bedroom cottages. Phillips served as ambassador in Rome from 2013 to 2017. Danny Meyer, founder of Union Square Hospitality Group, came in as his partner and became sole owner in 2025. The village now lets as five villas round a central piazza, twenty-two rooms in all, and the site states plainly that a booking takes the whole of it.

What distinguishes it

The whole village, or nothing Borgo Finocchieto is not let by the room. The site states that the property “encompasses 5 separate villas grouped around a central piazza, with 22 rooms total”, that it was restored “to accommodate up to 44 guests across 22 bedrooms and suites”, and that “when booking, guests take over the entire property”. The five houses — Filippi, Finocchieto, Santa Teresa, Fede and Colussi — sleep four, eighteen, eight, ten and four.

He went looking for a villa and bought a settlement Phillips acquired the hamlet in 2001, calling it a moment of irrational exuberance. What he acquired was five ruined buildings on about five acres, not a house. The restoration that followed covered approximately thirty thousand square feet across those five structures.

A conservation officer ran the work, not a hotel architect The New York Times named Amalia Agnelli, a former head of the preservation committee in Buonconvento, as the architect, and Karen Hartmann, a former Boston kitchen designer, as the decorator. Neither came from hospitality. The programme of the restoration was therefore conservation first and accommodation second.

The room count fell between the plan and the opening Reporting in January 2007, the New York Times wrote that the scheme ran to “23 bedrooms that could sleep 46”. The house now advertises twenty-two bedrooms and suites and a capacity of forty-four. The two figures are recorded here as they stand, eighteen years apart, and not reconciled.

Two owners, and the second is a restaurateur Phillips, who bought and rebuilt the village, left Italy in 2017 at the end of his ambassadorship. The house records that Danny Meyer, founder of Union Square Hospitality Group, became Phillips’s partner and “eventually its sole owner in 2025”. It is a privately owned village that has changed hands once in a quarter-century.

Signature rooms and dates

Competitive landscape