The car had barely come to a stop before our luggage was lifted from the boot and carried inside, leaving us free to follow hotel owner Beatrice Peruzzi to a table in the garden, where Italian coffee arrived with the pool spread out before us and the old watchtower rising at our backs. By the time the cups were empty our room was ready, and that small, unhurried sequence set the tone for everything that followed at Tenuta Bertarello, a five-room country house in Tuscia, some 70 kilometres north-west of Rome.
We had driven ourselves, as we tend to when travelling through Italy, and the final stretch towards Vetralla is defined by olive trees, row after row of them, well before the house comes into view. We rang at the gate and it swung open almost at once, and from that moment the stay felt less like checking into a hotel than arriving at the country home of a companion who had insisted we visit.
From watchtower to country home
Bertarello began life at the end of the 18th century as a watchtower, later serving as a granary, a hay barn and a farmhouse before standing empty for several decades. When its present owners came across it around 20 years ago it was little more than a ruin, and the restoration recovered what it could, including the original terracotta floors, the old beams and the stone itself. The house now sits within a certified organic farm of around 40 hectares, taking in olive groves, meadows, woodland and the vegetable garden that supplies the kitchen.
Beatrice is very much part of daily life here, welcoming guests, helping to bring plates to the table and talking about the estate with real passion. The rest of the team share the same easy warmth, so the feeling of being looked after by a household, rather than a front desk, stayed with us across all three nights.
Rooms with the weight of history
The house holds three suites and two double rooms, each with its own colour scheme, furniture and private bathroom with a bathtub, and we stayed in two of them. Both were remarkably generous in scale, with terracotta underfoot and antique pieces well-suited to the age of the building. In one, brick vaulting arched over a freestanding bath set beside a fireplace, while in the other the bath stood by a window beneath a chandelier, an arrangement that turned a long soak into a small occasion.
We headed straight for the shower on arrival and found bathroom products of a quality we would associate with more established, expansive hotels. The thick old walls proved their worth too, keeping the rooms pleasantly cool through the September days even with the windows open, then comfortably warm once the evenings turned crisp.
Slow days at Tenuta Bertarello
Our afternoons settled into a rhythm almost without our noticing. A bottle of white wine would arrive by the saltwater pool with a few small bites, and the quiet was so complete that the sights within easy reach, medieval Viterbo among them just 10 kilometres away, never quite managed to lure us beyond the garden. For two people used to busy lives, it was a rare and welcome chance to slow down.
A little way up the grounds, a timber barrel sauna stands beside a large circular hot tub, and we spent long stretches moving between the two with no thought of the time. One afternoon a cat from the house settled beside us on an outdoor sofa and promptly fell asleep, and it was not long before we followed, a fitting moment on an estate where four dogs, six cats and five horses are simply part of everyday life.
With only seven or eight guests in residence, breakfast brought gentle conversation with the other couples about how everyone had slept, an easy sociability that still left plenty of room for time alone.
A kitchen led by the garden
Breakfast is laid out in the kitchen itself, a vaulted room hung with copper pans, where a long wooden table holds cakes, cereals and bowls of berries. We began with raspberries, yoghurt with a homemade quality and a spoonful of honey from the estate’s own bees, then asked for eggs, and Beatrice, remembering how much we enjoy ham, cooked them together. Finished with a little extra olive oil, they became our favourite dish of the stay, and we ordered the same plate again on a later morning.
Lunch is arranged on request, though a late breakfast meant we barely needed it, and generous plates of ham, cheese, dried tomatoes and focaccia filled the afternoons instead. Bread, cakes and fresh pasta are made in the house every day, the pasta with eggs from the estate’s hens, and the menus follow the traditional cooking of Tuscia and the seasons.
Dinner by candlelight
Dinner is served in the garden beside the kitchen, at separate tables for each couple, dressed with lace cloths and candles and looking out towards the olive groves. On our first evening came pasta all’amatriciana cooked properly al dente, then slow-cooked pork with vegetables we had helped gather from the garden, and a classic tiramisu. As the air cooled we moved from white wine to red, and when we asked whether the fire pit might be lit, the team had it burning soon after, keeping us outside until close to midnight.
The second night brought a lentil soup fragrant with garlic and rosemary, followed by a very good panna cotta. Before our final dinner we walked the vegetable garden once more and picked a crop of white aubergines together. That evening they returned as parmigiana, sliced thin, topped with tomato sauce and Parmesan and baked until crisp, ahead of meatballs rich with onion and served with greens. The pineapple cake with white cream that closed the evening ranked alongside those breakfast eggs as the finest thing we ate all stay.
Dinner follows a set menu each night, and while every dish was a pleasure, a blackboard with a menu presented in the afternoon would let guests know what is coming and leave room to request an alternative. It is the only refinement we would suggest, and a small one beside the quality of the cooking.
Our verdict on Tenuta Bertarello
With only five rooms, the house suits travellers who already know Italy well and are looking for a quieter, more personal sense of its countryside and domestic life, whether over a long weekend or a longer holiday. Beatrice told us that families from the United States have taken the whole property for two to three weeks at a time, and after three nights the appeal was clear, since the same breakfast, the same corner of the garden and the same slow afternoons quickly become a routine.
We left with gifts from the farm, including the estate’s extra virgin olive oil, which Bertarello mills within six hours of its early October harvest and which has since gone into a dish cooked at home. It carried back a little of the calm we found at Tenuta Bertarello, along with a touch of sadness at leaving and a firm intention to return.
Quick summary – Tenuta Bertarello
- Style: Restored eighteenth-century watchtower turned five-room country house
- Location: Vetralla, in the Tuscia countryside of Viterbo province, 70 km from Rome
- Rooms: Three suites and two double rooms, each with a private bathroom and bathtub
- Dining: Set seasonal dinners rooted in Tuscia cooking and the estate’s organic garden
- Wellbeing: Saltwater pool (June to September), Finnish sauna and outdoor hot tub (a gym is also planned)
- Ideal for: Seasoned Italy travellers seeking a slow, personal countryside stay
