The tower
A thousand years of stone,
four generations of one family.
A short history
1042
First stones
A watchtower is raised on the road from Siena to Rome by the lords of San Quirico, to signal the approach of imperial troops with fire by night and smoke by day.
1487
Last alarm
The tower's signal beacon is lit for the final time, warning Pienza of an advancing Sienese column. After the war, it is left to the wind for four hundred years.
1923
The Bellandi family
Antonio Bellandi, a stonemason from Montalcino, buys the ruin and the surrounding three hectares. He spends sixteen years closing the roof.
2017
Eight rooms
His great-grandson Marco completes the restoration begun a century earlier, and opens the tower to eight guests a night, between April and late October.
Marco Bellandi
"We are not a hotel. We are a house that opens its door."
Marco grew up climbing the scaffolding his grandfather raised against the tower's south wall. He still keeps the workshop on the ground floor — most of the furniture in the rooms passed through his hands before it reached yours.
He cooks dinner on Wednesdays, and pours the wine every other night.
