Villa Cetinale

Province of Siena. Fabio Chigi began enlarging an existing house in 1651 and the work stopped four years later when he was elected Pope; his nephew Cardinal Flavio Chigi completed it in 1680 to designs by Carlo Fontana, a pupil of Bernini. Lord Lambton bought it all but abandoned in 1978 and worked on it until he died in 2006. Thirteen bedrooms, let as one house by the week. It is a Baroque villa that survived because it was lived in.

The house

Cetinale is a house built in two pushes by one family. Fabio Chigi, born 1599, began the enlargement in 1651 and abandoned it four years later on his election to the papacy. His nephew Cardinal Flavio Chigi, born 1631, finished the villa in 1680 and engaged Carlo Fontana, who had trained under Bernini, to design it. Flavio laid out a holy wood behind the house, the Thebaid, and a hermitage within it called the Romitorio, and used the wood for racing: the Palio was run there seven times between 1679 and 1692. When he died in 1693 the estate passed to his nephew Bonaventura Chigi Zondadari, who turned the grounds into a devotional landscape of chapels and a stone stair climbing to the Romitorio.

The house then decayed. Lord Lambton bought it in 1978, at which point, the villa’s own account says, it had been all but abandoned; he and Claire Ward repaired house and garden until his death in 2006. The Spaces reported that Ned Lambton, Earl of Durham, and Marina Hanbury took on the structural work afterwards, with sixty craftspeople and some ten thousand square feet of refinished walls and ceilings; the villa says it has recently had a complete refurbishment including a new roof. It is let whole, thirteen bedrooms, staffed, from twenty-five thousand euros a week.

What distinguishes it

Two Chigi popes’ worth of patronage, in instalments The villa’s own history states that “Fabio Chigi (1599-1667) began the construction of the villa in 1651 but work ceased four years later when he became Pope”, and that the house was “completed in 1680 by Cardinal Flavio Chigi (1631-1693)”. Twenty-nine years separate the first stone from the finished building. Carlo Fontana, Bernini’s pupil, designed it for Flavio.

The Palio was run in the garden Flavio Chigi used the Thebaid, the holy wood behind the villa, for hunting parties and horse racing. The house records that “the famous Palio horse race was run in the Thebaid seven times between 1679 to 1692”. The wood is still walked from the house.

The next owner built a pilgrimage into the grounds Bonaventura Chigi Zondadari, who inherited in 1693, developed the estate as a pilgrimage site with chapels and a stone staircase rising to the Romitorio hermitage. The villa counts what is there now: “The park contains seven votive chapels, sixteen full length statues and 29 busts.” Edith Wharton, writing in the early 1900s, said of the setting that “Fontana was wise enough to profit by the natural advantage”.

Forty years of one family’s repair, in two generations Lambton bought the villa in 1978 when it had been all but abandoned, and with Claire Ward restored the house and garden until his death in 2006; the gardens page describes the work as carried out over some forty years. The Spaces reported that the structural phase fell to his son Ned Lambton, Earl of Durham, with Marina Hanbury, a team of sixty craftspeople and about ten thousand square feet of refinished walls and ceilings.

It is let as a household, not as rooms The villa has thirteen bedrooms, three of them twin-bedded and one with a single bed, and The Spaces records it as available to rent from twenty-five thousand euros a week. What is let with it is staff: chef, waiters, daily housekeeping, porter, gardeners and a concierge, with linen changed twice a week and the pool cleaned daily. Three further houses on the estate — Casa Stella, La Cerbaia and Casa Fabbri — are listed separately.

Signature rooms and dates

Competitive landscape