The 5-bedroom farmhouse was built around a 13th-century watchtower, with views across the rolling Tuscan hills, around 30 minutes from Siena and under an hour from Florence.

Known as the “green heart of Italy,” Umbria is home to this historic Antico Borgo Rurale, where a group of old farm buildings has been restored as one private estate.

Set within the Sciusa Valley near Noli and Spotorno, the 3-bedroom residence occupies the villa’s piano nobile, its principal reception floor, with vaulted ceilings, 18th-century frescoes, private grounds and a swimming pool.

Once home to Sophia Loren and her husband, film producer Carlo Ponti, this secluded villa on Rome’s Appian Way sits above an ancient basalt quarry, with Roman mosaics, 2,000-year-old fragments and a history tied to Cinecittà, Rome’s legendary film studio and the heart of Italy’s postwar cinema.

Portrait artist to European royalty and leading cultural figures, Michele Gordigiani reshaped Striano with architect Luigi Del Moro as a house for painting, music and entertaining. Its extraordinary limonaia draws on the same Florentine garden tradition as the famous grotto at the Boboli Gardens.

Less than an hour from Rome, this restored 19th-century farmhouse sits on nearly 10 acres in the Etruscan countryside. Rebuilt from a ruin by 21-year-old photographer Filippo Chia, it reflects both his family’s Renaissance roots and the international art world he grew up around.

Commissioned by Francesco Burlamacchi, who was executed for plotting to unite Tuscany’s independent republics against Medici rule, the villa later became home to antifascist jurist Paolo Rossi, who helped draft the constitution of modern Italy.

Minutes from the historic centre of Cortona, a cypress-lined drive leads not to the intimate farmhouse fantasy popularised by Under the Tuscan Sun, but to a vast aristocratic residence shaped by one prominent family over several centuries.

While Como and Maggiore draw the crowds, Lake Orta remains the quieter insider’s choice—a smaller northern Italian lake favored by those seeking discretion, character and a slower pace.

In the 1970s, a concrete “spaceship” appeared among the colourful Art Nouveau villas of Cusano Milanino, less than 30 minutes north of Milan.