Giovanni da Verrazzano ★

A classic small-town Tuscan hotel overlooking the main market square of Greve in Chianti, unofficial capital of Tuscany's Chianti region

Saturday is market day in the river town of Greve in Chianti, and on market day the triangular main piazza, lined with mismatched arcades, is filled with white awnings.

These stalls of produce, porchetta (pork) sandwiches, and everyday necessities are arranged around the central statue of local sailor Giovanni da Verrazzano, discoverer of New York Harbor.

For the past 800 years, the hotel now named for this hometown hero has watched over the weekly market and daily life on the piazza of the Chianti region's main town.

The ten guest rooms are basic—modern terrazzo floors and painted metal bedsteads—but the views are lovely. Rooms on the front overlook the bustling square; those on the back (nos. 4–7) have little private terraces with vistas over lichen-spotted roof tiles to the hills beyond (the larger room no. 10 upstairs, with its sloping attic ceilings and Persian rugs, has similar views but no balcony).

The restaurant—filling a terrace atop one of the piazza’s arcades—has been feeding hungry visitors to Greve since AD 1,200.

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