A medieval Italian village gets a luxury makeover
Fashion mogul Massimo Ferragamo didn’t set out to buy a neglected 800-year-old village on a 4,200-acre estate. But when the chairman of Ferragamo USA (and youngest son of Salvatore) was looking for a small place in Montalcino, Tuscany, where he could make Brunello wine and retreat with family and friends, he happened upon this property and was instantly smitten. “Some of the best things in life happen by chance,” he says with a laugh in his office in New York. “It was totally by chance.”
And so in 2003, as the owner of a property that was “much, much larger than I had ever intended”, Ferragamo set about turning the estate into something more than a winery and a place to stay. His goal: To revive Tuscan history. “The only way to make Castiglion del Bosco come back to life was to make all the elements that exist there work together,” he says. “We decided to renovate all the buildings and create an experience.”
(This story appears in the May-June 2014 issue of ForbesLife India. To visit our Archives, click here.)