Roccapacia

A villa castle hotel in Paciano, Umbria

The hamlet of Paciano (pop. 974) was founded in the early 14th century amid the olive groves of Mt. Petravella, halfway between Umbria's Lake Trasimeno and the ancient Etruscan capital Chiusi.

Paciano's brick and stone houses topped by terra cotta roof tiles are threaded by only three streets and eight alleys, the whole of it no more than 600 yards long and still tightly bound within a medieval defensive wall of towers and town gates.

By one of these gates, anchoring a corner of the town, is the Roccapacia (a.k.a. Rocca Buitoni), a russet tower home renovated in 1500 as the summer residence for Cardinal Francesco Cennini. It's a massive house, covering 4,300 square feet with five bedrooms, four bathrooms, a chapel with 16th-century frescoes, and salons frescoed in the 1800s.

For the past 130 years, the Roccapacia has been in the Buitoni family (founders of a famous Italian food company; you've probably seen their packaged ravioli and fancy tortellini at the grocery store), and chef Luigi Buitoni now rents it out as a villa sleeping up to eight people.

In addition to those elegant frescoed salons (one with a piano), there's a large, more comfortably rustic living room under stone and brick ceiling vaults with a TV, couches and easy chairs, an enormous fireplace, and a dining area.

(Can't find seven people to share it with? April to September, if there's a week when no one has claimed the villa, Sr. Buitoni will sometimes rent out the individual rooms on a nightly B&B basis for €70–€120 per double).

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