Casa dell'Ortolano (also known as the Garden House) is a charming villa with private fenced pool 30 mins from Perugia, high in the beautiful Niccone valley, close to the border with Tuscany. 4 double bedrooms, all en-suite. Spacious, airy, chestnut-beamed rooms, stylishly and comfortably furnished with all mod cons, including air conditioning. Fully-equipped kitchen. Shaded terrace, sunny balcony and pool (11 x 5m). Broadband. Spectacular panoramic views. Peaceful & private setting in Casa dell'Ortolano's own pretty garden and also with wider access to the Casa Nova estate's 30 acres of orchards, wildflowers and woods.
The perfect base for exploring Southern Tuscany and Umbria. Guests are provided with itineraries for visiting the works of Piero, Signorelli, Pintoricchio and Raphael in the surrounding area. 12 mins drive from nearest town, Umbertide. Less than 10 minutes drive from a number of excellent restaurants. Ideally suited to family holidays: cots and highchair available, toys, children's books, dvds.
There is also a second house on the Casa Nova estate, Il Casale, with its own private gardens and pool (also listed on VRBO). The two together can accommodate up to 25, or can be rented separately, each being perfectly private from one another but both benefitting from access to the estate's vegetable plot and fruit trees. See website for further details.
Outdoor space: Up to 12 can eat in the shade of the pergola on the south side of the house, outside the sitting room. There is additional seating on the terraces outside the kitchen and on the sunny balcony, as well as under another pergola by the pool. The new pool, completed in 2019, is a bio-pool, which uses plants and lava rock in a filtration zone to provide clear, pure, chemical-free water to swim in (no diving, as depth is approx 1.20m). There is a large kettle barbecue for outdoor cooking. The garden is full of old roses and aromatic plants and the terraces below have a wide variety of fruit trees and soft fruits (figs, pears, plums, etc) which guests are welcome to pick for themselves, in season.
You are free to roam over most of the rest of the Casa Nova estate which is approx 30 acres and is a mix of woodland, orchards, and olive groves. Access to the irrigation lake is fenced off for safety. Bicycles are also available.
Guests can also visit the display gardens of our iris nursery, a short walk away down the hillside, where you will find a landscaped garden of irises, roses, peonies and other perennials, around a central pond and cascade.
Accessibility: The ground floor bedroom is suitable for someone who has limited mobility/difficulty with steps. It has only a shallow step to the outdoor terrace and no steps to the ensuite bathroom, or to the sitting room and kitchen. Although the main car park is above the house, there is a point on the drive where a car could drop off a passenger at the end of the lawn, about 30m away from the house, on a level with the ground floor entrance. Not specially adapted for wheelchairs, however.
Renaissance Art & Travel Notes: Renaissance art tours led by an expert in Central Italian painting, pottery courses, and cookery courses can all be arranged at certain times of year.
Our nearest airports are: Perugia (35 mins by car; Ryanair and BA from Stansted), Florence (hour and a half), Ancona (2 hours; Ryanair from Stansted), Pisa (2 ½ hours; Ryanair, Easyjet, BA and Alitalia), Rome (3 hours; all major airlines).
There are two mainline railway stations within about 1/2 hour drive: at Perugia and at Terontola in Tuscany. From the latter trains run South to Rome and Naples and North to Florence and Milan. There is also a small local line 15 mins away, at Umbertide, which connects the main towns up and down the Tiber valley.
A car is necessary at Casa Nova.
