Anna Bernabei Biondi Santi is the owner of Villa Santa Chiara, a luxury holiday home in Siena available for short-term rentals. The Villa — offered to guests either in its entirety or in part — allows visitors to savour the breathtaking panorama of the Sienese hills, a landscape Anna knows intimately: “when I look at myself and at the way I see the world, I cannot help but think that my father’s and mother’s families share a deep bond with the land.”
Her blue eyes turn towards the landscape that seems to stretch endlessly to the south of Villa Santa Chiara, a seventeenth-century estate she inherited from her father, a distinguished physician and professor at the University of Siena. Today, the Villa is home to Anna and her eldest daughter Claudia, a licensed tourist and environmental guide working across Siena and Tuscany. The Villa welcomes guests from all over the world — and, naturally, a cherished group of feline friends who have long since decided to make it their permanent residence.
A Villa Overlooking the Sienese Valleys
In the breathtaking panorama stretching to the south of the Villa, two of the most captivating Sienese valleys come into view: the Val di Chiana and the Val d’Orcia. Anna’s mother came from those very lands — from Montalcino, one of the medieval hilltowns that dot the Tuscan landscape and define it, much like the rolling hills, the cypress trees and the vineyards. It was in Montalcino that the Biondi Santi family — Anna’s maternal lineage — invented Brunello, one of Italy’s most celebrated and distinguished wines.
“It was such a shame,” says Anna with a half-smile, “that it never occurred to my ancestors to patent it!”
For decades, the name Biondi Santi was synonymous with Brunello. Anna’s cousin Simonetta still produces an internationally award-winning Brunello and offers the guests of Villa Santa Chiara an unmissable Tuscan wine tasting experience. But wine is not the only thing that runs through the veins of this Tuscan family. At her villa just a short distance from the centre of Siena, Anna produces olive oil for friends and guests alike. Thanks to the exceptional quality of the land, the oil is of the highest standard — as both the palate and laboratory analysis confirm.
The olive trees — more than five hundred in all — were planted by Anna’s father, whose own father had purchased the building in 1917 (a convent, later converted into a country residence and farmhouse) along with the surrounding land.
The Villa stands at the top of a hill directly opposite Porta Romana, the gateway in Siena’s ancient walls that looks out towards Rome — a threshold crossed by hundreds of pilgrims travelling the Via Francigena, whose passage contributed greatly to the city’s fortune and prosperity. Anna, a gynaecologist who devotes her free time to the care and improvement of her property and to welcoming guests to Siena, is said to rather enjoy thinking of herself as a country girl. In truth, anyone who spends a little time in her company will soon notice that her appearance and manner embody a most refined and elusive combination of understated elegance and simplicity.
It is telling that one of her favourite stories to share with friends is of the time she found herself tending to the henhouse dressed in her finest.
An Alternative Tuscany Holiday:
a Seventeenth-Century Villa Just Steps from the Centre
This small tale of hens and haute couture captures, in its own way, the kind of alternative Tuscan holiday one can expect when choosing Villa Santa Chiara: every comfort will be at your disposal, yet everything around you will remind you of that land from which Anna says she comes.
From the grounds of Villa Santa Chiara, you will be able to admire Siena’s ancient walls, the Basilica dei Servi, Porta Romana and the tip of the magnificent Torre del Mangia — reachable on foot in just a quarter of an hour. Yet from the opposite side, your gaze will lose itself in a sea of hills and gentle valleys, stretching all the way to the distant silhouette of Monte Amiata.
Here lies the secret of Villa Santa Chiara and of Siena itself: the singular experience of a landscape shaped in equal measure by the hard work of generations of farmers, by art and by culture. Anna will tell you that all of this comes from the land — and perhaps she is right. But there is so much more: and you will have the opportunity to discover it for yourself at our luxury holiday home in Siena.
