An ancient castle transformed into Italy's most exciting new hotel

Count Benedikt Bolza is a details man and also a perfectionist – perhaps the two key traits that have shaped Italy’s most hotly anticipated new hotel, Castello di Reschio, which opened its doors on April 21 after several months of Covid-enforced delay. Fortunately, Benedikt is also a pragmatist and he has viewed the delay not so much as an inconvenience but as an opportunity for the minutiae of every room and every public space to be thoroughly tried and tested, and for the planting of the castle grounds to really take root. The result is an impeccable exercise in no-expense-spared hotel design, coupled with an evocative landscape of rolling hills and cypress trees. This is Umbria, barely a whisper from the border with Tuscany; indeed, on an adjacent hilltop, a rival castle flexes its sturdy Tuscan muscles.

A millennium has shaped the history of this castle, but it is really only the last 30 years or so that have defined its present and its future. Back in the Eighties, Antonio Bolza, an Austro-Hungarian count of Italian descent, bought a farmhouse plus, in due course, the adjoining 3,700-acre Reschio estate. He moved from Germany to Umbria with his wife and children, including Benedikt. At the time, the land was as derelict as the 50 or so abandoned farmhouses that lay scattered across it and the ancient castle, at the estate’s most northern point, was barely habitable. And so began a project – still ongoing – of restoring all the farmhouses (26 have been completed to date) and selling them off to a consortium of wealthy – and often famous – owners, who value the estate’s strict policy of privacy and discretion.

Benedikt’s involvement stepped up a gear in the Nineties on his return from London as a qualified architect. Taking up the reins of the estate with his wife Nencia Corsini (from the distinguished Florentine family), he threw himself into the business, becoming minutely involved with every stylistic decision of every farmhouse conversion. His father, meanwhile, was finally given the freedom to indulge his passion for training and riding Spanish dressage horses, which, along with exquisite stables and a dressage ring, form an integral part of the Reschio estate today.

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For 10 years, Benedikt and Nencia lived in a chilly section of the castle, raising five children and working tirelessly on the estate’s regeneration, knowing that at some point the moment would come for them to undertake the biggest challenge of all – the transformation of the castello into a hotel. This was to be ‘not just another hotel’, as Benedikt puts it, but a reflection of ‘who we are and how we like to live’. This has taken at least five years from conception to delivery. During this time the couple sourced furniture, art and antiques throughout Italy, much of it from the biannual Mercanteinfiera antiques fair in Parma.

Alongside this, Benedikt – who considers himself as much a furniture and lighting designer as an architect – designed specific pieces. These include lamps, sofas, chairs, tables and, for each of the hotel’s 36 bedrooms, a campaign bed, a dressing table and a bar. These three items provide a common thread in the rooms, which otherwise have a uniqueness to their design determined by size, location in the castle and sometimes an object (or a person) that has provided defining inspiration. Number 8, for example, known as Uncle Pope (the 18th-century Pope Clement XII was a Corsini) has a gold altar; number 10, Frantoio, incorporates the castle’s original oil press; number 27, the Count’s Suite, has an enormous fireplace. Stone and wood play an important role throughout in floors and beamed ceilings, while plastered walls have been left unpainted and bathrooms often squeezed into impossible spaces.