Borgo dei Conti, Umbria has approached high-level tourism more recently compared to other Italian regions. This isn’t a delay but rather an advantage that has allowed it to approach tourism more delicately and with higher quality. Secluded, endowed with still-intact nature and known for its innate spirituality, it hasn’t shouted its credentials to the world but has presented itself quietly with innovative projects that speak of contemporaneity, love for the territory and its people, reclaiming slowness and a human rhythm of living and thinking.

In this context that attracts through its genuineness, the novelty is the Relais & Chateaux Borgo dei Conti Resort, just a few kilometers from Perugia and Assisi. Reopened in July 2024, it’s the result of a comprehensive renovation of Count Lemmo Rossi-Scotti’s villa, the most important 19th-century painter, who retreated here to paint, finding inspiration even just by looking at the landscape from the window: an Italian garden that dissolves into a forest, 16 hectares of mostly wild nature.

The real revolution is inside, thanks to the project by Spagnulo & Partners studio that enhances every view and the irregularity of the spaces. Almost a small village united by tentacular paths where one must learn to orient oneself. No room is the same as another, like the two suites on the main floor named after the count and countess, each with decorations and antique pieces that make it unique. And despite the lounge with the fireplace, sumptuous sofas, and an inlaid 18th-century trumeau, one lingers gladly in the large bathroom, with the bathtub in front of the window, parquet and Etruscan terracotta floors, the dressing table (perfect also for resting your computer and writing), and an antique fireplace with two armchairs in front. Conversation, even between the most seasoned couples, becomes fluid and discursive here.

The restaurant is spacious and full of plants, but dining or having breakfast on its veranda is incomparable. While waiting for your cappuccino and omelette, you notice that between the branches of the trees you can glimpse the hills with a few ancient houses on top, like in the background of a Renaissance painting. In the kitchen, Emanuele Pazzella, an inspired chef from Ischia, prepares the gourmet menu, but there’s also a tavern where you can order platters of cold cuts (and who doesn’t appreciate Umbrian charcuterie?) and tagliatelle with generously grated black truffle at the table. Here too, in front of the pool shaded by gigantic maritime pines, poetry certainly doesn’t lack.

The surprise is the spa. Another environment where you can shut the world behind you! Paths of saunas, hammams, and showers, other pools, and a padded room where one lets go in an amniotic bath at 37°C, without sounds, without colors, and without lights. A way to reset the senses and then reactivate them with more awareness.

The Borgo is about walking outdoors, breathing among the trees, dining in the secluded cabin in the woods (hard to think of something more romantic), tasting honey from experimental beehives to test and rebalance the biodiversity of the forest. The project is articulated, with spaces still to be incorporated and designated, and above all linked to the territory with the Place of Wonders project that the Babini family has created in this new hotel and in others in their collection (Londra Palace in Venice and The Place in Florence). The foundation’s objective is to identify the most special artisans, support them in their work, and award scholarships to young people who want to dedicate themselves to activities destined to disappear. In Perugia, for example, you meet Marta Cucchia, who graduated in design in Milan but chose to return home to continue the loom weaving activity started by her grandmother Giuditta Brozzetti. Her workshop is inside a deconsecrated church flooded with light, where she creates tapestries, carpets, and linens with designs taken from Leonardo’s Last Supper or other masterpieces by Giotto or Cimabue.