Il Bottaccio, Relais & Chateaux

Il Bottaccio sits below the green hills behind Forte dei Marmi, within reach of Pietrasanta, Lucca, Pisa and the Cinque Terre. A Relais & Chateaux Maison since 1988, it was made by the D'Anna family, gallery owners and patrons, as a private residence that happens to take guests, a place, as they put it, for people who do not much like hotels. Every stay is arranged to fit the guest…Il Bottaccio sits below the green hills behind Forte dei Marmi, within reach of Pietrasanta, Lucca, Pisa and the Cinque Terre. A Relais & Chateaux Maison since 1988, it was made by the D'Anna family, gallery owners and patrons, as a private residence that happens to take guests, a place, as they put it, for people who do not much like hotels. Every stay is arranged to fit the guest rather than the other way around. Water, marble and art run through the whole of it. The great wheel that streams off the Apuan Alps once drove still stands in the garden, and marble drawn from the same quarries Michelangelo worked has found its way here through contemporary sculptors, some of it reflected in a pool set at the centre of a dining room where olives were once pressed. In the kitchen, Nino Mosca draws together the day's fish and what the surrounding woods give up, with a strong preference for what is local. Beyond the walls lie Lucca and Pisa, Lunigiana, Torre del Lago and its Puccini Festival, and Pietrasanta a short step away, where sculptors from Moore to Botero have kept studios among the marble. The nearest airport, Eliporto, is about five minutes' drive, with Montignoso about six.