Wow..... that was our first impression as we walked out into the terrace and saw the view!

Everything from the view, to the pool, to the kitchen, to the bedrooms were absolutely amazing.  Our first night there drinking wine outside watching the sun set was truly fabulous.  I can not remember the last time we were all that relaxed.

Thank you for setting up our cooking lesson with Debra and Bee.  They were so sweet, and dinner was delicious.  We learned to make things that we never thought we could make.

Thank you for setting up the wine tour with Guliano.  He was great!  It was a great way to see so many little towns, that you never thought you would go to see.

Thank you for your hospitality and your wonderful house.  I am going to miss waking up and looking out the window at Cortona.  What we will miss the most is those amazing sunsets.... every night was a different one.

Not a day goes by without thinking of our stay at Il Rifugio.

We came home and got back into the rut a little too quickly... but things have settled down now and we've been able to really look at the pictures and meet with our friends that stayed with us... we all agree that this was just a perfect week. The only thing that would have made it more perfect was if it were 2 or 3 weeks. 

We all think that Cortona is a great spot - plenty to do, see, eat, drink, walk, hike, shop - no need to venture beyond the town. 

The farmhouse was all that we expected and much more. It was comfortable, inviting at every turn, picturesque and felt like home. We had so many happy times there - dinners that lasted for hours, wine on the terrace at the end of the day, a fire in the wood burning stove on the cooler days, plenty of spots to be alone and read or plenty of spots to talk with friends. Many thanks for this and all the wonderful memories. 

We appreciate your hospitality and filling us in on the history of the house. We look forward to a return visit and have also recommended Il Rifugio to many friends. We hope you and Shirley are well and enjoying late spring in Cortona!

We both started looking for a dream location to hold our wedding about a year ago.  We started our search on the internet.  We knew we wanted to find a villa in northern Italy. 

After an exhaustive search we decided to stay at Il Rifugio.  We could not have made a better choice!!!  We are both honored and surprised that we are the first wedding at Il Rifugio.  This was indeed our dream wedding.  The memories will remain with us for our entire lifetime.

Shirley and Chuck provided the ideal ending to our wedding day.  Shirley prepared what was our finest meal in all of Italy.  Chuck served our wedding party and picked the perfect wine to go with every course of our meal.
We feel that our marriage was indeed blessed by having our wedding at Il Rifugio

We plan to come back every five years with our children and grandchildren to relive our perfect day.

"Our trip started off with rain and then more rain, and then harder rain. This commenced on the Friday of the Pope's funeral to the following Tuesday morning, when the rainbow appeared. Il Refugio was just that the first weekend, a refuge, because no matter how strong the wind howled and whipped and whistled, with metal upon metal clanging thrown in, you still felt safe. warm and comfortable in the farmhouse.
Good friends, good food and wine, add a dash of good conversation, a nice fire and good music, and you have great stories to tell and remember, despite the rain.
...............then the rainbow came.

We now had the pleasure of experiencing the sights and sounds described by previous lodgers. Their words jumped off the pages in your guest book. The birds, the view from the terrace. The layers of countryside, and the friendly wave and greeting from passerby.
Coffee on the deck in the sun, great breakfasts for leisurely mornings.
Then off to another Tuscan village that amazes and humbles. No village was better or more welcoming than Cortona. There is a great energy there, and when there one feels warmer inside and out.
..............then we had to day "Ciao".

We really appreciate you opening up your home to us. Although we did not meet you or your wife personally, we could feel your presence through the personality of Il Refugio. As my wife stated earlier, we looked for real estate in Tuscany to continue to enjoy this beautiful part of Italy. We later decided that anything we could find, no matter how grand, would fall short of what Il Refugio has. We will just return here and enjoy the experience again and again. Thank you for your vision, generosity, hospitality and the gift which is 'Il Refugio' "

"Il Rifugio was wonderful!"

"Our expectations, based on your excellent website and the comments of others, were high. The site, geographic location, house and garden layout, building quality, landscaping, interior arrangements and fitout exceeded every expectation and satisfied every wish. You have been so thoughtful in catering to your visitors needs and your housekeeping team is obviously a dedicated crowd. Please pass on to Terri, the gardeners and others involved in the upkeep our thanks and admiration - it's a particular mystery how the plantings have developed (from earlier photos on the website) and look so good with the minimal rainfall of a couple of typical Tuscan summers.

Wishing you every good luck with the pool saga! I hope we may recommend Il Rifugio to our friends? We certainly couldn't imagine a better place to spend another sojourn in Italy - hope we will be able to one day."

"Since our three children were little, my husband and I have always taken them on a "Father's Day Trip". It was our gift to them for being such great kids. Now that they're married, we've always invited the spouses to join us. This is a trip we've taken for many years and we've traveled to many places. However, nothing can compare to the time we spent at Il Rifugio this year.

I must admit, seeing pictures and reviewing your website, I was a bit apprehensive that the house would be too "big", or too "cold" for us. We spend most evenings during our vacation just spending time together talking, relaxing and playing games. Well, my apprehension was unnecessary. The house, with its fireplaces, cozy rooms and comfortable furniture was exactly what we wanted. We especially enjoyed the great "oversized" kitchen as one of our traditions is for each of the kids (and his/her spouse) to cook dinner for the rest of us every evening. Not only was the kitchen well equipped with sizable stove, burners, etc., it was furnished with every possible kitchen utensil the kids could think of. The rest of us could wander in and out of the kitchen at all times without disturbing them. Needless to say, our pictures of the house bring back incredibly fond memories.

The gardens, patios and olive groves gave us spectacular view over the region and watching the weather come over the mountains was incredible. It's hard to imagine a more beautiful setting for such privacy!

Your continued assistance with everything we needed was truly appreciated. From the olive oil tasting with Louise to our "in-home" meal cooked by Terri, your planning and recommendations were were the reasons our time in Cortona was such a memorable experience.

We hope all is well with you. Please give Louise and Terri our best regards (and thanks!). If we should think of returning to Tuscany for a repeat of our time there, we would not hesitate to come back to Il Rifugio for another memorable visit."

"As we drove from Florence to our destination in the Tuscan hills about an hour south of the city, poppies and blue iris waved along the roadsides and in the fields. Once in the country, a rural road took us past abandoned farmhouses to the tiny village of Montonare (a post office, bus stop, tobbacci, and assorted other businesses). From here, a right turn wound the final kilometer uphill to Il Rifugio, a restored 18th century farmhouse overlooking its own olive groves, gardens, and fields. From the terraces, we could see across the cultivated valley with its copses and lines of cedars to the medieval fort above the ancient and pristine town of Cortona, and far below the market town of Camucia.

Otherworldly describes Il Rifugio: a private spot full of beauty and quiet, bird song and wildflowers. The house, elegant, spacious, and thoughtfully furnished with an artistic eye for the antique and the contemporary, offers innumerable places to draw, paint, write, and photograph. You can set off walking in almost any direction and come upon old churches, hidden glades, and patches of Mediterranean wildflowers. One favorite woodland path rose gently for about two and a half kilometers and brought us to a spectacular view overlooking Lake Trasimeno. At night, we toasted the sunsets over the valley.

Half the time we prepared meals from the cheeses, olives, salamis, prosciutto, fava beans, fennel, tomatoes, breads, and pastas found in local markets. We frequently lunched al fresco on the stone terrace under a cypress, and once or twice had dinner under the stars. Many evenings, we explored the local restaurants; these ranged from the informal to the refined. Always we ate well, reasonably, and, more than not, in high style.

In early May at Il Rifugio the Judas tree was in blossom and the olive grove in early bud. Although the days climbed into the seventies, Il Rifugio’s stone walls kept the interior perfectly cool. Most nights the stars shone bright and, toward the end of our stay, we had the added glory of a full moon.

While completely private, Il Rifugio is far from isolated. It lies just ten minutes from Cortona, and about the same distance to Torontolla, one of Italy’s major rail stops. We soon found that we could combine driving with public transportation to get just about anywhere. But I have to say that the charm of Il Rifugio made tourist excursions seem less than essential.

Our days passed in perfect harmony, divided between time spent luxuriating in the rural life of Il Rifugio and forays to neighboring hill towns and cities. The Italian trains glide quietly, we discovered, through richly varied countryside. One trip took us to Arezzo for the day, another to the wineries of Montepulciano; a third to the Umbrian hill town of Pacciano, and a fourth to Florence. Each excursion brought us back “home” to Il Rifugio, where we began to feel we belonged.

At Il Rifugio, many doors open out onto the terrace, many interior and outdoor places invite contemplation; many vistas ask to be lingered over and returned to in all lights. Our invisible host had arranged everything to make our stay as carefree and delightful as possible: we chose our vino from his ample and exquisite collection of Tuscan and other wines; drank from crystal; ate off traditional Cortonese ceramic ware, still made in the centuries’ old pottery and sold along the Via Nationale in Cortona.

In the realm of the prosaic, let me praise the fluffy American towels, the laundry room equipped with the ultimate state-of-the-art washer and dryer, the selection of Italian sightseeing, art, and garden books, the basket of goodies including a bottle of Il Rifugio olive oil on the kitchen table awaiting our arrival, the soporific reading chairs, the comfortable beds, the perennial gardens, the spacious and thoughtfully equipped kitchen, the huge working fireplaces. We felt utterly removed from the world, yet a short drive brought us to one of the sidewalk cafes in Cortona, where we talked to various English-speaking locals, tried out our Italian, peeked into ancient churches, paid homage to religious relics, prowled museums… and simply took our time getting to know this extraordinary hill town.

Back in the States, a week later, all this seems quite unreal."

"Every family fortunate enough to add their story to this farmhouse villa's rich history should begin as we did, approaching on a moonless night with an overgrowth of chestnut and olive trees pinning the car to its steep ascent, the city lights and buzzings surrendering to a silent arrival with no real hint of our whereabouts, except for the pietra serena stone walls that greeted us in the night, the thick gnarled chestnut beams suggesting 'you're secure here' and the table laiden with supertuscan wines and cheeses and meats unlike anything you've ever tasted. And then you awaken and shuffle out onto the back veranda with the sun at your back and lighting the long Tuscan valley that sweeps up to the birthplace of European civilization, the Etruscan citadel of Cortona where later in the day you'll be welcomed--without regard to position or place, deadline or commitment--arms open and with the same loving hug that everyone young and old offer each other, with time only for now."

"We arrived at Il Refugio after an exhausting drive from France, and all the aches just melted away when we went exploring through this great old farmhouse and discovered for ourselves how lovingly you're restored it. Your hospitality and graciousness were matched only by the perfect mattresses and pillows that made our nights as wonderful as the Tuscan days. See you again next year! "