Perfect Italian Weekend | Buonconvento

A perfect weekend in Italy without the limitations of time, budget, or distance. Every week we ask interesting and inspirational Italians, or Italians at heart, to take us along for a perfect, local weekend. This week Violante Venturini Del Greco from Tenuta Castelnuovo Tancredi takes us along to Buonconvento in Tuscany.

Violante 

Violante spent her childhood holidays with all her cousins at the family castle, Tenuta Castelnuovo Tancredi. The estate has been family-owned since 1897 and continues to evolve through the generations. Today, it consists of the Castello, two beautifully restored farmhouses — Aiale and Castelrotto — as well as a highly regarded winery.

Violante now runs the estate and knows this part of Tuscanylike the back of her hand, not as a destination, but as the landscape she grew up in.

Saturday

Saturday morning starts at the market in Buonconvento. I always stop at Francesco's workshop — the most chaotic bottega you've ever seen, run by a blacksmith who still works the way people used to. He made the interior staircase at Aiale. Francesco and I have known each other our whole lives — his grandmother and his mother Lisena have cooked for every generation of my family. They are home. At the village fairs in Buonconvento, Lisena is still the one in the piazza feeding everyone. Some people are just the centre of a place. That's the kind of Saturday morning I need.

Lunch is almost always at Gli Amici di Campriano, a tavola calda in front of the station. The kind of lunch where you never know when it ends.

In the afternoon, a show in Siena or a drive into a nearby valley. Aperitivo at the Cantuccio in Buonconvento. For dinner, Amor Divino in Asciano or Monticchiello — but only off-season. When the tourists arrive, I disappear to Marcello and Rita's terrace at Il Bibbio in Bibbiano.

None of this happens in high summer. In summer I work. These are April, May, October pleasures — and I protect them

Sunday

The perfect Sunday is an off-season Sunday. A long breakfast, the kids playing tennis, Olmo waiting by the door. Then a long walk, or I get in the car and drive — through the valleys, no destination. Pompana, where friends I've known forever still live. La Befa, where there used to be a bar and now there's almost nothing — I go back anyway, and I look.

I've always been drawn to light and how it falls on familiar places. Photographers have passed through this land for decades — some of them very well known — and the spots they found are still mostly hidden. I know some of them. On a good Sunday morning I'm looking for that same thing: something that was always there, that most people drive past.

In summer, the river Merse instead — cold water, a picnic, nothing else needed. On the road near Frosini there's a bar with no hours and no schedule, open only when the owner feels like it. If he's in a good mood, the sandwiches are extraordinary.

Wherever you end up, someone you've known your whole life will appear and offer you a coffee. It might last thirty minutes. It might last all day. These are people whose grandparents knew my grandparents — each family still on their own land, still in their own village. Frosini is almost an hour from the estate. It doesn't matter. You drive, because on the other end there's a house you've been walking into since you were small.

Stay at Tenuta Castelnuovo Tancredi 

Tenuta Castelnuovo Tancredi is not a hotel, but a private Tuscan estate made up of three distinct homes, each with its own rhythm and identity.

The Castle | CASTELLO offers 8 double bedrooms, accommodating up to 16 guests. Exclusively available for special occasions and events/weddings 

Villa | VILLA AIALE welcomes 12–14 guests

Podere (farmhouse) | BORGO CASTELROTTO hosts up to 18 guests.

Winery: wine tastings offered to guests and outside guest | Bookings 

All photos taken at the Tenuta Castelnuovo Tancredi Estate - by @katiejameson