Paolo Crepet, the owner of Corte della Maestà, understands people. He really understands people. He’s one of Italy’s best-known psychiatrists, and the author of about 20 books on the topic.
As plenty of people in the luxury world will tell you, hospitality entails a good deal of psychology. So it’s little wonder that Crepet and his wife, Cristiana Melis, have created one of the most captivating places to stay in all of Europe. The four-bedroom house, with its spiral staircases and curious artworks, gives guests a sense of being at home, but in another era. They like to call it a timeless retreat.
Timeless as it may be, there’s a strand of time travel in the improbability of it all. First, you have to get there. The property is located in the medieval village of Civita di Bagnoregio, dramatically perched on a plateau of volcanic rock and surrounded by deep ravines, at the convergence of Tuscany, Umbria and Lazio. The only way to reach it is to leave your car in a lot, then walk up a long path to the city walls. When you see it from a distance, it looks fake—some storybook scene or stage set, too fantastical to be true. When you reach it, you pass under an arch and enter the 16th century.
Unlike some other European medieval villages, it’s not just a 16th-century shell, in which most of the homes have been replaced with shops selling soaps and cheap souvenirs. There are still just a few simple restaurants and cafés, a 13th-century church, a handful of stores and functioning (if seasonal) family homes. There are about 10 permanent residents, but the town hasn’t lost its soul.
Among the part-time residents are Crepet and Melis, who divide their time between Civita di Bagnoregio and Rome, about 50 miles away. In the village, they acquired a house about 20 years ago and turned it into one of the first hotels in the hamlet.
Entering Corte de Maesta—the name fittingly means “court of majesty”—is not unlike entering the village itself. You’re surprised at how magical, perfect and unlikely it all is. Behind a gate so unassuming you’d likely walk right past it is a courtyard with leafy trellises, potted flowers and a collection of inquisitive kittens. The walls of the house are fully covered in dense ivy.
The entrance is into the kitchen, the soul of any good Italian home. This one is swoon-worthy, with a giant farmer’s table, weathered brass pots on the walls, piles of fresh fruit, chandeliers hanging from the arches, and a 2,100-year old stone that was part of a Roman ruin as part of a doorframe. In the morning, there’s a lavish breakfast spread, including jams, marmalades and cakes made on site.
The bedrooms are upstairs. Each was inspired by literature and given an eclectic decoration and a playful name. The Sleepwalker, a tribute to the work of Vincenzo Bellini, has a headboard that was taken from an early-19th-century theater. The Intruder, dedicated to Jorge Luis Borges, has a French atmosphere and a striking painting by Pierre Sallé. And the Writer, entered via a private access from the garden, has a terrace that’s covered with an arbor of roses, a fragment of a 16th-century fresco and wallpaper that is a reproduction of the wallpaper in Virginia Woolf’s London home. I chose the Abbess room, an homage to Stendhal’s The Abbess of Castro. (I stayed as a guest of the owners.)
Your guide to luxury travel—and life's other indulgences.
Earlier in my trip, my companions and I had joked about how different cultures express delight. In Eastern Europe, I learned, people shake their heads from side to side as if saying no but meaning something like “this is so overwhelmingly wonderful that I am at a loss for words.” We had laughed about that. But then, in the Abbess, with its cast-iron claw-foot bathtub in the living room, French walnut fireplace, fanciful canopied iron bed and vintage café table overlooking the village and vineyards on my terrace, I found myself—a typically smiling American writer—shaking my head from side to side. It defied not only my verbal skills but my sense of what is possible. That a place like this could exist in 2017 left me dumbfounded.
The bedrooms share that glorious kitchen, a downstairs living area with an old stone fireplace and vintage Forneris piano, and a garden with hydrangeas, roses and fruit trees. The owners also host guests for tastings of local products and wines in a cantina that was carved entirely by hand.
A fifth bedroom occupies its own two-story house nearby. It is where the collection of historic treasures is most outstanding. Downstairs, the living area has a weathered stone fireplace and a sofa framed in French oak from the early 18th century, and the kitchen has a wall covered in 17th-century Portuguese azulejos and another hung with copper pans from a Parisian restaurant. An old cast-iron staircase spirals up to a large bedroom whose walls appear to be covered by an enormous hedge, thanks to a rare wallpaper made by Zuber, the oldest producer in France.
There are many more vintage details, like an original poster advertising a Puccini opera, and washbasins that once adorned a Florence hotel. It’s a dreamy retreat and a perfect place to hole up with a loved one, but it was the main house—and the hospitality that’s on offer there—that left me shaking my head in delighted astonishment.
