Today that most iconic of Italian trees, the cypress, once again uniformly line gravel roads snaking along ridgelines; the Bolzas having replaced any missing “teeth.” When the morning fog lifts from the valley floor where the Niccone River winds through tobacco fields, these dark sentinels marching off into the distance are the first to emerge. Then slowly, one stone farmhouse after another appears. The castle materializes in the mist as if out of a fairy tale.
The glory of present day Reschio began with a single farmhouse and a business plan that was basically ‘build it (or rather, design it) and they will come.’ Buyers, primarily Americans in the beginning, would first fall in love with a ruin, then with Benedikt’s vision for bringing it back to life. He would deliver a fully designed and outfitted casa, down to the bed linens and a stocked fridge. The arrangement called for buyers to front the investment required to execute that vision. Over the course of 30 years, Benedikt has renovated 29 houses in this manner, each paying for itself before a spade of dirt was turned. In this agrarian setting, he is a farmer and his crop is farmhouses, all spiritually guided by earth mother Nencia.
“As an architect, it’s a dream scenario to be able to take a genus and keep revisiting it,” Benedikt says. “Time allows best practices to evolve and one’s taste naturally changes.” Though his preferences for colors and finishes have evolved over time, his principal architectural goal— to bring light into formerly dark stone buildings that had only small openings—has never wavered, nor has his steadfast commitment to using (or reusing) only natural, native materials.
The typology of the estate’s farmhouses is a cluster of stone structures: a main dwelling and auxiliary buildings. Benedikt took advantage of the spaces in between to creatively insert greenhouse-like structures, with the twofold win of gaining light and maintaining the footprint of the original buildings to comply with local regulation. By bringing daylight into the darkest recesses and creating a more seamless open plan, he has catapulted the typically rustic Umbrian farmhouse into the modern age.
“Living on-site always gives you the best insight,” Benedikt says. He and Nencia camped out in a few of the castle’s small rooms when their five children were young. “I gave birth at home, and we homeschooled them in their early years,” Nencia says, “though nature was as much their teacher as we were.” It was all very primitive and intimate, which the young family found both liberating and instructive.
For his own farmhouse renovation, which Benedikt began in 2012 after years of holing up in the castle, a lofty atrium unites two buildings, filling a new staircase with light and sky. With the castle, a grander gesture was called for: a new soaring palm court that matches the scale and gravitas of the magnificent stone fortress. The court now serves as the bright and welcoming heart of the Hotel Castello di Reschio, a central hub for the 30 rooms and suites within the castle itself and the six additional suites outside the walls, adjacent to the parish church of San Michele Arcangelo.
Such are the rewards of organic growth, of taking it slow. Every design decision for the hotel emerged from intimate knowledge of the place: 30 years of renovating farmhouses and designing every inch of their contents, 11 years of living in the castle with no heat and lots of leaks. Benedikt’s design for a steel fire grate, for instance, was a direct outgrowth of warming the small kitchen room the family gathered in. The grate’s tall sides kept logs from rolling out and endangering his babies.
That steel grate is now part of B.B. for Reschio, a collection of more than 50 handsome pieces (furniture, lighting, accessories) all designed by Benedikt, made with materials sourced in Italy and fabricated by local artisans in the Reschio Estate Workshops, which are housed at the bottom of the hill in the Tabaccaia, a 1940s factory building that Benedikt transformed into design studios. This is where the canopy and four poster beds, dressing tables, bronze valets and Poggibonsi lamps with pleated velvet lampshades that give the guest rooms such elegant distinction are all made. The Tabbaccaia also serves as the repository for Benedikt and Nencia’s ever-evolving cache of esoteric auction finds—decorative objects, side tables, candlesticks, books, mirrors, frames, sculpture, paintings—that work their way into every space, enriching new designs with extra layers of history and personality.
Benedikt has become especially captivated by old portraits. Though only a few of the subjects are relatives (none have such labels), including one of Nencia and her twin sister, they nevertheless are characters who spin a narrative for each room, often driving certain decorative elements. Together the dramatis personae communicate the importance of lives lived. Benedikt recognizes that regardless of the guise heritage comes in, it matters. As do people, be they from illustrious backgrounds or not.
If you can tear yourself away from simply admiring all that is around you, there is much to do: cooking and painting classes, foraging, truffle hunting, row boating at a lakeside cabin, bicycling, hiking, tennis, riding or simply marveling at the Spanish Purebred Horses Count Antonio breeds and trains in Reschio’s dressage arena.
And then there is the pool, restorative whether you immerse yourself in it or simply lounge beside it. Of all the brilliant design strokes at Reschio, it is the most strikingly modern, an elegant, mirrored ellipse set flush within a carpet of verdant grass. As with all things supremely “simple,” it was a complex feat, an example of Benedikt’s dogged perfectionism. With its subtle stone infinity edge, steps discreetly nestled between two wood bathing platforms and an ingenious pool cover that emerges from the water’s depths like a blooming tide, the pool’s beauty lives up to its setting, a former paddock now surrounded by hypnotic views. The lofty tousled heads of umbrella pines provide a luxuriant elevated canopy, their narrow trunks separating the panorama into delicious dollops of hills near and farther. From the south end of the pool, the soaring castle walls are caught in a mirror image, the glassy surface reflecting warm stone, bookends of modern and ancient.
Doing things well, using the finest materials, respecting the land, honoring the past while integrating the future, giving the smallest detail as much focus as the big gesture—such is the credo at Reschio. Here, caring about details isn’t a burden, it’s a baseline. The Bolza family’s elevated taste and impeccable execution is so second nature to them that it seems effortless, which makes guests feel relaxed. But effortful may be more on point, and that fullness tumbles over into a sense of generosity. For the Bolzas, the satisfaction of creating a place of beauty is topped only by the joy of sharing it with others.
