SPECIAL OFFER FOR EASTER: 30% off on every night beyond the third!

Between the 17th of March and the 13th of April we have a special offer for the Easter Break. Your holiday can start any day of the week and if you are staying more than three nights you willl receive a discount of 30% for every extra night. Book now for a great Spring holiday!


SPRINGTIME IN TUSCANY

Carnevale is over, we just entered Lent ('Quaresima' in Italian), the 40 days of fasting and penitence before Easter. It is the right moment to start thinking what to do for Easter. Spring in Montalto is just perfect. Everything is blooming, the courtyard is a triumph of wysteria, the gardens sing to the sky the happiness of life. Swallows come back from far away and bring with them the laborious chatter of nest-building. The woods shake off the grey laziness of winter and the skies display again their glorious Tintoretto clouds. You will never want to stop roaming about, enjoying the new sun, the March crocuses and primroses exploding in the woods and then the daffodils in the garden, the tulips, the roses, and more.

Actually the best way of enjoying the countryside is on horseback. The riding centre nearby organizes long treks over the clay hills now covered by fresh green (suddenly in Spring one realizes how many different shades of green there are) or in the cool woods following the smell of mushrooms. Another riding centre organizes horse-back tours inside of Siena on demand. If you like truffles, don't miss the white truffle festival in San Giovanni d'Asso (but you'll have to go by car...)

But of course there are so many things to do around, you can't just stay in the countryside:

• Castelnuovo Berardenga, the village closest to Montalto, has a traditional via crucis on Good Friday, with costumed figures on horseback, while another famous procession for the Holy Cross is held in San Gimignano.
• In Siena you can see falconry exhibitions
• March 1st also marks the opening of a period of specially discounted cumulative tickets to visit the extraordinary concentration of art in Siena's cathedral, its recently discovered Crypt, the OPA cathedral museum (housed in part of the never-completed "duomo nuovo"), and the beautiful Baptistry with a 'Baptism of Christ' by Titian on special loan.
• Florence celebrates the strong ties between Italy and America on the 500th anniversary of the death of Amerigo Vespucci with two art exhibitions: Americans in Florence. Sargeant and the Impressionists of the New World and American Dreamers - Reality and Imagination in Contemporary American Art