Eighteen months dark, and the lights are on again above Florence. Villa San Michele reopened on 28 April, holding the same view it has kept since the fifteenth century.
The road to Fiesole climbs through cypress and stone. Florence falls away below, the Duomo a small terracotta mark in the heat. Villa San Michele sits near the top of the hill, behind a façade the city has long tied to the circle of Michelangelo. The gates opened again on 28 April 2026, after an eighteen-month renovation.
The return
The building started as a Franciscan convent in the fifteenth century, named for Saint Michael the Archangel. Belmond handed the redesign to the Florentine architect Luigi Fragola. There are 39 rooms and suites now, 27 of them suites. The old bones stayed: stone fireplaces shaped after the friars' cells, frescoed walls brought back, Impruneta terracotta underfoot.
Three signature suites carry the history. The Limonaia runs over two floors and has a private plunge pool. The Grand Tour stretches along the first floor of the façade, once Napoleon's headquarters, now set with travel artefacts. The Botanica opens straight onto the gardens and the woodland behind.
The terraced gardens at Villa San Michele · Courtesy of Belmond
The spa
The spa is new. Villa San Michele Spa by Guerlain takes the first floor of the old convent, three treatment rooms including a double suite. A corridor hand-painted by the artist Elena Carozzi leads in, fronds and foliage running up the walls. Two treatments were built for the house, Floral Delight in Tuscany and The Art of Renaissance, the second worked with stone tools.
JJ Martin, who founded the Milanese label La DoubleJ, shaped a wellbeing programme in the villa's woodland. A former chapel now holds a gong and a light and sound installation. There is a deck for yoga and a lounge angled for the sunset over the hills. The first retreat runs 3 to 6 September.
The view does the work here. Everything else is arranged around it.
The Splendid EditThe terraced gardens cover more than 10,000 square metres, redrawn by Luca Ghezzi. Lemon and bitter orange stand in pots along the terraces. Lavender, rosemary and iris fill the borders, and a new rose path runs 42 metres for slow walks above the city. Past the walls, the woodland of Monte Ceceri has new trails and old stone benches set back where they were.
The table
Antesi is the new restaurant, eight tables under a sixteenth-century loggia, led by executive chef Alessandro Cozzolino. The name comes from the Greek word for the moment a flower opens. Three tasting menus move through it, Attesa, Ora and Traccia. The kitchen buys close to home and cooks to the season.
San Michele Restaurant holds the formal end of dinner, the Grill works the poolside, and Bar Doccia sits between the cloister and the gardens for an aperitivo. The cocktail list runs from a proper Negroni to looser versions of it. Antesi takes outside guests for dinner, Tuesday through Sunday.
Florence in summer is hot and full and worth the trouble. The villa keeps you above the worst of it, fifteen minutes from the Duomo and well clear of the queue at the Uffizi. Book a garden suite, walk the rose path before dinner, and let the city stay where it is.
Villa San Michele, A Belmond Hotel, Florence reopened on 28 April 2026 following an eighteen-month renovation. The hotel now opens from spring through winter. Rates and bookings through belmond.com.
Photography by Adrian Gaut and Mattia Aquila, courtesy of Belmond · Villa San Michele, A Belmond Hotel, Florence
Produced with AI assistance, edited by The Splendid Edit.