Skip to content

Top Navigation

Travel + Leisure Travel + Leisure Travel + Leisure Travel + Leisure
  • Trip Inspiration
  • Travel Guides
  • Plan Your Trip
  • World's Best
  • Destination of the Year
  • A-List Travel Advisors
  • Cruises
  • Travel Tips
  • News
  • Food + Drink
  • Travel Accessories
  • Check-In

Profile Menu

Join Now

Account

  • Join Now
  • My Profile
  • Email Preferences
  • Newsletters
  • Manage Your Subscription this link opens in a new tab
  • Join T+L Club this link opens in a new tab
  • Give a Gift Subscription
  • Help
  • Logout
My Account

Account

  • Join Now
  • My Profile
  • Email Preferences
  • Newsletters
  • Manage Your Subscription this link opens in a new tab
  • Join T+L Club this link opens in a new tab
  • Give a Gift Subscription
  • Help
  • Logout
Login
Subscribe
Book Now
Pin FB

Explore Travel + Leisure

Travel + Leisure Travel + Leisure Travel + Leisure Travel + Leisure
  • Explore

    Explore

    • World's Best

      World's Best

      The greatest islands, cities, hotels, cruise lines, airports, and more — as voted by you. Read More
    • The 50 Best Places to Travel in 2022

      The 50 Best Places to Travel in 2022

      Whether you're traveling solo or planning a family vacation, here are the 50 best places to visit in 2022. Read More
    • Let's Go Together Podcast

      Let's Go Together Podcast

      Start listening to T+L's brand new podcast, Let's Go Together! Hosted by Kellee Edwards. Read More
  • Trip Inspiration

    Trip Inspiration

    • Trip Ideas
    • Weekend Getaways
    • Spring Travel
    • Summer Travel
    • Fall Travel
    • Winter Travel
    • Solo Travel
    • Romantic Getaways
    • Luxury Travel
    • Beach Vacations
    • Adventure Travel
    • Road Trips
    • Family Travel
    • National Parks
    • Holiday Travel
    • Travel Photography
    • Photo of the Day
    • Culture + Design
    • Like a Local
    • Travel To
    • 50 Years of Travel + Leisure
  • Travel Guides

    Travel Guides

    See All Travel Guides
    • Mexico City
    • Maui
    • Charleston
    • Tulum
    • New York City
    • London
    • Paris
    • Iceland
    • Los Cabos
    • See More Travel Guides
  • Plan Your Trip

    Plan Your Trip

    Norwegian Cruise Line Will Require Vaccinations for All Passengers and Crew

    Norwegian Cruise Line Will Require Vaccinations for All Passengers and Crew

    Norwegian Cruise Line hopes to resume sailing out of the U.S. on or around July 4.
    • Travel Deals
    • Attractions
    • Travel + Leisure GO
    • Amusement Parks
    • Festivals + Events
    • Bus and Train Travel
    • Flight Deals
    • Budget Travel
    • Hotels + Resorts
    • Disney Vacations
    • Airlines + Airports
    • Ground Transportation
    • Get Outside
    • Wanderlust
  • World's Best

    World's Best

    • Top Hotels
    • Top Cities
    • Top Islands
    • Domestic Airlines
    • International Airlines
    • Tours
    • Safaris
    • See All World's Best
  • Destination of the Year
  • A-List Travel Advisors
  • Cruises

    Cruises

    • Find A Cruise
    • Caribbean Cruises
    • River Cruises
    • European Cruises
    • All-Inclusive Cruises
    • Family Cruises
    • Alaskan Cruises
    • Disney Cruises
    • See All Cruise Vacations
  • Travel Tips

    Travel Tips

    • Travel Trends
    • Packing Tips
    • Points + Miles
    • Budgeting + Currency
    • Customs + Immigration
    • Responsible Travel
    • Travel Etiquette
    • Travel Warnings
    • Weather
    • Mobile Apps
    • See All Travel Tips
  • News

    News

    • Wellness
    • Celebrity Travel
    • Animals
    • Jobs
    • Offbeat
    • See All News
  • Food + Drink

    Food + Drink

    • Restaurants
    • Wine
    • Beer
    • Cocktails + Spirits
    • Bars + Clubs
    • Celebrity Chefs
    • Cooking + Entertaining
    • Food Fairs + Festivals
    • World's Best Restaurants
    • A Spirited Occasion
    • See All Food + Drink
  • Travel Accessories

    Travel Accessories

    • Travel Bags
    • Shoes
    • Travel Tech
    • Shopping
    • Style
    • Gift Guides
    • See All Travel Accessories
  • Check-In

Profile Menu

Subscribe this link opens in a new tab
Join Now

Account

  • Join Now
  • My Profile
  • Email Preferences
  • Newsletters
  • Manage Your Subscription this link opens in a new tab
  • Join T+L Club this link opens in a new tab
  • Give a Gift Subscription
  • Help
  • Logout
My Account

Account

  • Join Now
  • My Profile
  • Email Preferences
  • Newsletters
  • Manage Your Subscription this link opens in a new tab
  • Join T+L Club this link opens in a new tab
  • Give a Gift Subscription
  • Help
  • Logout
Login
Sweepstakes
Book Now

Follow Us

  1. Home
  2. Trip Ideas
  3. Agriturismi: Italy's Best Affordable Spots

Agriturismi: Italy's Best Affordable Spots

By Anya von Bremzen June 15, 2011
Skip gallery slides
Pin
Credit: Mauro Fermariello
The sheets may not be frette and the Internet is still dial-up, but if you don’t mind a wake-up call from a rooster, picking your own tomatoes for dinner, or sharing the pool with the proprietors’ little kids, then you’ll love an Italian agriturismo. Despite stringent guidelines, the number of farmstays across the country has flourished and is now estimated at around 20,000. Unpaved country roads lead to centuries-old farms where intimate family meals and evening pasta lessons with mamma hark back to a simpler way of life. And even more memorable than the kitchens are the prices, usually a third of what you’d pay at a hotel (and that’s with dinner thrown in).

“I cried when I saw the stream of green liquid emerge from the centrifuge,” confesses California-born Pamela Sheldon-Johns about her first batch of organic olive oil made at her Tuscan estate. Known among fooderati for her excellent cookbooks, Sheldon-Johns moved to Tuscany with her family 10 years ago after falling hard for a 17th-century stone sharecropper’s house shaded by huge olive trees just south of Montepulciano. The Johnses converted part of the structure into three antiques-filled apartments—plus a small double room—where guests are encouraged to cook using fava beans and cavolo nero (black-leaf kale)from their garden. Sheldon-Johns is happy to arrange a Sangiovese tasting at her friend’s enoteca near Montepulciano or a lunch at nearby Avignonesi, producer of the world’s most prized vin santo. For her cooking classes, guests gather in the kitchen, which is anchored by a wood-burning stove. She might share minestrone secrets—start with only olive oil and add veggies one at a time—or explain how a soffrito of carrots, onions, and celery will add flavor to any soup or sauce. Poggio’s biggest allure is its family vibe: Sheldon-Johns’s teenage daughter, Alaia, draws up activity-pac
Start Slideshow

1 of 5

Pin
Facebook Tweet Email Send Text Message

Piedmont: La Traversina

La Traversina
Credit: Rosana Varese Puppo

Deep in the wooded hills of Southern Piedmont, Rosanna and Domenico Varese Puppo run a retreat straight out of a fairy tale. The air surrounding the 300-year-old, vine-draped, part-stone house is thickly scented with roses. Inside, four wood-beamed guest rooms and three small apartments are decorated with the owners’ travel mementos and auction finds. La Traversina trades not in cattle or crops but in flowers—which means that the garden is a fragrant riot of 200 kinds of flora, including some 50 species of irises. Rosanna is a former architect, a dog breeder, and a kitchen genius; Domenico is an expert in heirloom tomatoes; and at their side is their “adopted son,” Vijaya, a charismatic, multilingual Sherpa in his late twenties who came from Nepal for a visit and decided to stay in Italy. At night, an equally colorful crowd congregates around the superlong wooden table for Ligurian vegetable torte and pastas swathed in emerald pesto with thyme, basil, and marjoram from the garden. Over grappa, Vijaya spins yarns about Himalayan mountaineering disasters, and Rosanna explains the origins of Monteboro, a local sheep’s- and cow’s-milk cheese shaped like an elaborate wedding cake. Sign up for a gardening, yoga, or cooking class, or just perfect the art of dolce far niente by the flower-fringed pool.

Great Value 109 Cascina La Traversina, Stazzano; 39-0143/61377; doubles from $148; dinner for two $80.

1 of 5

Advertisement
Advertisement

2 of 5

Pin
Facebook Tweet Email Send Text Message

Veneto: Tenuta La Pila

Tenuta La Pila
Credit: Simon Watson

“I admit I’m a little Swiss,” jokes the former textile entrepreneur Alberto Sartori, explaining why everything runs like clockwork on his 108-acre farm in the green Veneto plains between Verona and Rovigo. But the ebullient welcome he and his wife, Raimonda, give guests here is purely Italian. At Tenuta La Pila, things are done big: the fertile farmlands yield corn, wheat, and soy; the enormous orchardproduces many apple varieties and every conceivable stone fruit; and row upon row of kiwifruit vines—Italy is one of the world’s largest producers—flank a 50-foot-long swimming pool. The architecture is just as impressive. Converted from a 1733 rice mill and fronted by a pebbled courtyard, the property includes a graceful Neoclassical casa padronale (main house), a mustard-colored barchessa (an arcaded barn where guests sleep), and an Art Nouveau carriage house that functions as an office. Raimonda has outfitted the five guest rooms and seven apartments with lighting, linens, and incredibly comfortable mattresses sourced from across Italy. Veneto being maize country, expect plenty of smooth, fluffy polenta for dinner, served with a rustic stew of farm goose and braised wild greens. Sartori and his wife offer dinner just twice a week so that guests can explore the area’s Slow Food restaurants—the perfect end to a day trip to the nearby Palladian villas or the art-filled cities of Verona, Vicenza, Ferrara, and Padua, all less than an hour away.

Great Value 42 Via Pila, Spinimbecco; 39-0442/659-289; doubles from $118; dinner for two $59.

2 of 5

3 of 5

Pin
Facebook Tweet Email Send Text Message

Friuli: La Subida

La Subida
Credit: Judith Klinger

The first thing to know about La Subida, in the northern Collio wine region bordering Slovenia, is that it houses the best Michelin-starred restaurant in the area. Hosts Josko and Loredana Sirk match quirky details with updates of rib-sticking Friulian specialties such as zlikrofi (potato dumplings), plum gnocchi scented with cinnamon, and an epic veal shank, slow-roasted in an old bread oven and then paraded around on a cart under a copper lid. The Sirks prefer to use the phrase vacanze verdi (green vacations) to refer to their 16-cottage property. The shingled-roof mini-chalets, scattered along a slope at the edge of an oak forest, espouse an Alpine-Zen aesthetic with swaths of blond wood, sleigh beds, and plenty of firewood for the fogolars, or traditional fireplaces. Spend an afternoon at La Subida’s aromatic acetaia (vinegar factory) where Josko produces an extra-puckery, barrel-aged vinegar from local wine grapes, or hop on one of the property’s bright-yellow Vespas to visit the terraced vineyards on both sides of the border: Venica, in Collio Gorizia, and Movia, in Dobrovo, Slovenia.

Great Value 52 Via Subida, Cormons; 39-0481/60531; cottages for two from $172; dinner for two $172.

3 of 5

Advertisement

4 of 5

Pin
Facebook Tweet Email Send Text Message

Le Marche: Locanda della Valle Nuova

Locanda della Valle Nuova
Credit: Guilia Savini

You can’t help wondering what a woman like Giulia Savini—fluent in three languages and with two international master’s degrees—is doing living in Le Marche raising white Marchigiana cows and pampering guests on her 185-acre farm. But Savini and her parents, who also live on site, are as passionate about the environment as they are about hospitality. A short drive from the Renaissance town of Urbino, their 1980’s farm, with six modern guest rooms and three apartments, is as eco-conscious as it gets: crops are strictly organic, the stove is fueled by tree prunings, and electricity is generated by photovoltaic panels on the roof. If you don’t care for morning horseback rides or excursions to artisanal producers, stay here for the food. Loyal to her Piedmontese roots, Giulia’s mamma, Signora Adriana, makes an unforgettable beef bollito misto as well as a rich tagliatelle, made with eggs from her henhouse, that’s tossed in a deep-flavored wild-boar ragù. The best she saves for last: some two dozen house-made liqueurs culled from the pantry, crammed with colorful jars of elderflower and sour-cherry preserves.

Great Value 14 La Cappella, Sagrata di Fermignano, Pesaro e Urbino; 39-0722/330-303; doubles from $166; dinner for two $89.

4 of 5

5 of 5

Pin
Facebook Tweet Email Send Text Message

Campania: Le Tore

Campania: Le Tore
Credit: Mauro Fermariello

Between chatting with guests, canning tomatoes, and pressing award-winning olive oil—and disciplining Tex, a frisky Labrador—when does Vittoria Brancaccio find time to relax? “Sometimes I forget my own name!” admits the vigorous agronomist turned contadina, who also serves as president of Italy’s 5,000-member Agriturist association. Back in 1982, when Brancaccio’s father bought her the rambling 35-acre property—elevated above Santa Agata Due Golfi, in the Sorrento Peninsula—agricoltura, she says, was considered a dirty word in Italian. Now, she notes, it’s positively glamorous. Named for the ridge dividing the Sorrento and Naples peninsulas, Le Tore has a sunny, slightly ramshackle authenticity: crates of Amalfi lemons are scattered around the property, free-roaming speckled Livornese hens peck away, and operatic arguments take place in the kitchen over what to serve for lunch. The eight guest rooms in an 18th-century villa are just as autentico, with terra-cotta floors, cheery bedspreads, and frescoes by a friend of Brancaccio’s. Meals here are long affairs, served under a grapefruit tree that borders a lush vineyard. What to expect? Plates of cloudlike ricotta and mozzarella produced nearby, handmade pastas dressed with Brancaccio’s vibrant tomatoes, and platters of garlicky vegetables. If you’re lucky, there’ll be Campanian pizza rustica, too, a sweet, crumbly dough filled with basil-scented cheese and salumi. Guests are welcome to help work the fields during harvests, but Brancaccio jokes that “bad workers” are fired immediately. Instead, she suggests picnicking in the property’s olive grove, which faces the Mediterranean—or playing with Tex.

Great Value 43 Via Pontone, Massa Lubrense, Penisola Sorrentina; 39-333/986-6691; doubles from $130; dinner for two $120.

Anya von Bremzen is a T+L contributing editor.

5 of 5

Replay gallery

Share the Gallery

Pinterest Facebook

Up Next

By Anya von Bremzen

    Share the Gallery

    Pinterest Facebook
    Trending Videos
    Advertisement
    Skip slide summaries

    Everything in This Slideshow

    Advertisement

    View All

    1 of 5 Piedmont: La Traversina
    2 of 5 Veneto: Tenuta La Pila
    3 of 5 Friuli: La Subida
    4 of 5 Le Marche: Locanda della Valle Nuova
    5 of 5 Campania: Le Tore

    Share & More

    Facebook Tweet Email Send Text Message
    Travel + Leisure Travel + Leisure

    Magazines & More

    Learn More

    • Subscribe this link opens in a new tab
    • Contact Us
    • Advertise
    • Content Licensing this link opens in a new tab
    • Accolades this link opens in a new tab
    • Travel + Leisure Wine this link opens in a new tab

    Connect

    Follow Us
    Subscribe to Our Newsletters
    Sign Up
    MeredithTravel + Leisure is published by Meredith Corporation under license from Travel + Leisure Co. Copyright 2022 Travel + Leisure Co. All Rights Reserved. TRAVEL + LEISURE is a registered trademark of Travel + Leisure Co., registered in the United States and other countries. Travel + Leisure magazine may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice. Privacy Policythis link opens in a new tab Terms of Servicethis link opens in a new tab Ad Choicesthis link opens in a new tab California Do Not Sellthis link opens a modal window Web Accessibilitythis link opens in a new tab
    © Copyright Travel + Leisure. All rights reserved. Printed from https://www.travelandleisure.com

    View image

    Agriturismi: Italy's Best Affordable Spots
    this link is to an external site that may or may not meet accessibility guidelines.