Collegio alla Querce, Auberge Collection

Two years after the Barnabite fathers opened a boarding school on this hill north of Florence, in 1868, they installed a geodynamic observatory, and one of them, Timoteo Bertelli, recorded the tremors under it in work that helped build the science of seismology. The school, in a 16th-century villa, lasted more than a hundred years, and since March 2025 it has been a hotel of 83 rooms. Esteva i Esteva, a Spanish father and son, did the architecture; the classrooms became suites with stone-lined bathrooms and, in some, a wine cellar of their own, which no boarder was ever issued. The Affreschi Suite keeps restored frescoes from the 16th and 18th centuries. Outside, the gardens step down the hillside in terraces, and on the top one is a 35-metre pool with Brunelleschi's dome to the south.

Recommended for anyone who wants Florence in view rather than underfoot, and for families: cots are free, children under twelve sleep free in an extra bed, and every restaurant has a children's menu. A free shuttle runs into the centre from ten until half past seven; the walk down takes about half an hour, and the walk back up is the shuttle's best advertisement. The concierge can arrange an evening at the Accademia after closing, with Michelangelo's David and nobody in front of it. In season Il Bosco serves pizza and grilled fish under a pergola by the pool, and Vivoli, the Florentine gelateria of 1929, sends a cart. Dinner is at La Gamella, in the school's old dining room, where Nicola Zamperetti's cooking leans on seafood. Then Bar Bertelli, in the headmaster's office, with a cigar room beside it and portraits of the principi degli studi, the school's top pupils, along the ceiling, kept in after hours.