The Villa

Laughter Activities Perfect villa Idyllic surroundings Atmosphere Nature at it‘s best Exercise galore in the pool & the tennis court... & the steps! Lovely, homely & tasteful touches Lazy, hazy days AMAZING!

It has been a wonderful special visit to La Pianella in every respect. Donatella started it off with arranging our pick up at the airport and continued from there! Such gracious hosting left me with such an affection for this place and the surrounding countryside. A wonderful place for a gathering of old friends, with such laughter, food, sun, wine and conversation. The accommodation fit the moment perfectly - all the comfort of home with room for everyone. The sound of birds and beautiful vistas filled my senses with joy. Thank you for sharing this beautiful place with us. I won't forget it and hope to return one day soon. Grazie tanto! p.s. Donatella is a treasure. La Pianella is so lucky to have her as a representative! Exceptional at her job, handling all with grace and good will! Plus her cooking!!

Perfect in every way....Grazie mille!!

I had a wonderful time at La Pianella. Thanks to Donatella and Sonia. The food was great!!! Visiting the smaller towns & villages of the area gave me a great feeling for the Italian culture and the people.

We are at Pisa airport waiting for your flight home. Just to thank you for our amazing time at La Pianella. Both weeks were completely amazing. everyone has commented how brilliantly the villa is equipped, everything has been thought of...the fantastic views, wonderful pool and the magical Donatella! We had a wonderful Tuscan dinner made by her our last night. Infact it was such a success, that my friends have been talking to Donatella about the possibility of hosting their wedding at Pianella - which we all got very excited about as they were not engaged before this discussion - but now seems they might be! Hope the rest of the summer goes well and all the Pianella guests enjoy it as much as we did...

Had a marvelous two weeks at La Pianella! Donatella is a gem! She is an amazing chef and made us feel so welcome. We enjoyed every moment at the villa - the pool, eating al fresco, cooking in the farmhouse kitchen & driving the winding roads. We have memories of a lifetime! love the crew ❤️

One could not wish for a better and more beautiful place to celebrate an 80th Birthday with the family. The house is a close to perfection as one can get and we hope to return one day Special thanks to Donatella for her wonderful cooking and exuberant enthusiasm.

Dear Clare I wanted to thank you for a great holiday. We had the best time!! La Pianella is gorgeous. We enjoyed the tennis court, table tennis, the garden and the lovely pool area very very much. You did a great job with the renovation and I suppose, you still have a lot to do. But the place is really great. And thankfully the corona restrictions were ok. We would have loved to stay longer but the kids have to get back to school.So I wish you a great season with nice people and say again: Thank you for all your help beforehand… All the best

It was a really pleasant stay at the villa. Everybody was happy and enjoyed Villa, pool and the tennis court. We had a wonderful time. From our point of view everything was perfect, even the weather 🙂 Best wishes from Germany. We miss the sun ☀️

There are insufficient words to describe the joy that La Pianella brings time after time... friendship, laughter & so much joy... A spectacular view and of course „MY POOL!“ 😀

Dear Clare We are back in the States now, and just wanted to let you know how very perfect La Pianella was as a holiday house. It is truly beautiful and we especially appreciated how well-equipped it is. We are a family of cooks and everyone loved the kitchen. Not to mention the pool, the view, the rooms etc... It really is a perfect place and we fell lucky to have been able to spend time there. Julia and family

La Pianella was the perfect place for our extended family of 15 to spend a week. We loved everything about this house - the views, the pool, the garden, the rooms and the kitchen. We are a family of cooks and loved that we could grill, make pizza, bread, etc. with ease and enjoyment. The house and grounds are even more spectacular than the pictures and the lay out of the house is really designed for both individual privacy and common spaces. The memories of this week will definitely last a lifetime. Working with the owners was easy, directions were spot-on, minor repairs were made immediately and the local area is truly lovely. So highly recommended - I would go back in a heart-beat!

Exceeding all our expectations PLUS superb personal welcome - thanks!

Hi Clare, wonderful holiday at La Pianella, lovely to meet your Mum on our last day. The villa is idyllic and we had so much fun around the pool and tennis court, we even managed to hold our own olympics with swimming, diving, water polo, synchronised swimming, tennis, table tennis and football, great fun was had by all. I hope we can all return again for my 75 or 80th!! Thanks again and best wishes for the future

Hi Clare Just want to say what a wonderful holiday we had at La Pianella. It was quite simply perfect for the whole family and we didn't move very far!! The house, pool, tennis court and table tennis court kept everyone exercised and were such fun. My son in law perfected pizza in the outdoor oven by the end of the week and we found it a great way to use up the left over food on the last day. All the adults enjoyed sitting out in the evening with the view and the stars and the warmth - assisted by the wine and the food. Utterly blissful. Please pass our good wishes and thanks to your mother - and of course to your good self. Best Regards

We spent one week with 8 adults and 6 children from 3-9 years old. A beautiful and well furbished house with a nice garden with a great view. The tennis court was a highly appreciated extra. We were welcomed with a fruit/vegetable basket. Making our own pizzas was fun as well (but a lot of work). The pool is 100 steps above the house, which has advantages as well as disadvantages. Shopping takes a 20 minute trip down a steep and narrow road to the village but that's the price for absolute quietness and privacy.

We stayed in La Pianella with a group of 14. We loved the place, its view is beautiful, the surroundings are lovely, 20 mins. to Lucca, 1 hour to Florence and half an hour to the beach! The place is well maintained and the garden is superb! The salt water pool is great, no chlorides, so you can swim all day! The owners were very friendly in helping out. One point which could be improved, is the WIFI connection, which is poor and unstable, so take your own 3G connection.

A beautiful and well catered villa in a stunning location - a perfect place to set up a very stylish camp for a Tuscan holiday adventure. Great facilities ranging from everything you need in the kitchen to very comfy rooms and garden WIFI, tennis court & a pool with a view! Loads to do and explore in and around the area, beach resort within short drive, beautiful countryside to explore, great local restaurants and sights - of just the perfect base to stay and enjoy some quiet time.

I don't think that I have been more relaxed on holiday. I am here with a group of friends and my daughter. Fourteen of us in total but this didn't make the environment any less tranquil. The views are breath-taking. The pool is divine and the kitchen is a pleasure to cook in. I really do not want to leave.....look out for the fire-flies at night!

A wonderful family retreat - my mother's 70th and family flew in from Oz, France and London. A wonderful week had by all.

Thrilled by the house and garden. Loved the tennis court and the pool. The views are sensational. Went to Lucca, Pisa, Camaiore, Lido di Camaiore, Tone del Lago, Peschia, Monteccatini and Gombitelli. Arrived in a down pour and found the road up daunting but got used to it. Greatly enjoyed a log fire every evening. Ideal number and disposition of rooms. Thank you for providing such an imaginative place. (p.s. Tried the pizza oven but reckon we need to go on a course!)

We visited in the summer of 2009. Brought along a teenage boy - always difficult to please....... Not so at La Pianella - a great swimming pool with views to die for and the sun all day, an amazing tennis court with a great surface to play whoever would oblige and a superb choice of terraces from which to chose for long, sociable meals. A well equipped kitchen to produce healthy, or not so healthy, mouthwatering meals from ingredients from the local stores, fresh figs for breakfast and starters from the garden as well as fresh lemons for adding to the drinks all added to the "relax and feel at home" environment at La Pianella. Clean, cool and comfortable bedrooms with bathrooms with lashings of hot water. A comfortable sitting room for get togethers and card games in the colder evenings. Situated in Pescaglia the options for day trips - if you can tear yourself away from the villa that is! - are huge. Plenty of choice of local friendly villages or the bustling town of Lucca. The beach is not too far for a day trip either. Altogether we can certainly recommend La Pianella for a relaxing time away with family or friends of all age groups. It was hard to tear ourselves away at the end of our stay - we felt very much at home and very spoilt - the perfect holiday.

A truly memorable week with very many happy memories. The pool was used virtually all the time. It really is brilliant! Love the salt water system. Tennis court also saw some exciting action, but not quite up to the standard we watched at the center court last Sunday. Thank goodness for SKY! Wonderful, wonderful

We just wanted to say thank you so much for everything. We have been back from La Pianella for a few days and already miss it so much. We had such an amazing time and could not be happier with our experience. Katinka was wonderful and very helpful. She set us up with a great winery tour and places to eat dinner near by. The catering company you suggest were also great. We feel so fortunate that we found your villa online because it was everything we imagined and more. When we return to Lucca, which we plan on doing, we would not want to stay anywhere else. Thank you so much again, and best wishes for everything in the future!

I highly recommend this wonderful house. Amazing views, very helpful owners in a very nice part of the world. Close enough to Lucca for day visits and very private. We had a very memorable stay. On a practical note, the house was clean and well maintained, gardens were pretty and the tennis court was great.

I had a wonderful stay here at La Pianella. Within an hour of arriving I had left my London worries behind me and I was sat relaxing on the terrace of this fabulous villa, with a gin and tonic in hand! Every morning I would climb the 99 steps up to the inviting pool, and in the early evening I would play a vigorous game of tennis - I have never played on a court in such a stunning location. The court is nestled into the hillside, and I am told that in the spring the colourful wisteria hangs from the trees and hugs the court. Day trips in to Lucca are a must. It has so much history to devour and the beauty is as you would expect of an ancient Tuscan town. My stay here was relaxing, educational and full of Tuscan cheer, my only regret is that I could not stay longer. You must visit here to appreciate it's beauty, as they say 'seeing is believing'.

This is the ideal gettaway from a busy life! My second visit to the house, that should say it all but here goes; The web-site understates this amazing location, the view from my bedroom window looked across the valley and was simply breathtaking. The descriptions used on the web are accurate but cannot describe the wonderful ambiance and the 'feeling of home' that you have just as soon as you get there. Beautifully maintained and 'Swiss' clean! I cannot recommend this highly enough. You'll love the pool, ideal for a dip or if you are feeling sporty it is large enough for laps, not forgetting the tennis court or even the table variety (the table has been added since my first visit). I cannot wait to visit again in 2011. Thank you for allowing us to visit your very special home.

"We stayed here with five families in the summer of 2010. What a great location! A great pool, the best tennis I've ever seen and a nice cozy house. Together with our friends we have the vacation of our life . Our children (between 8 and 12 years) enjoyed themselves greatly with table tennis, badminton, tennis and a swimming pool. There is a pool-house with a refrigerator so you do not need to go to the house as well equipped. In the kitchen, everything is great for cooking. We have real food lovers and we left nothing to short. The villa is located on a fifteen minutes from Lucca so that's nice and close for a day of sniffing culture. All in all a lovely villa a great location"

We just want to let you know that we had a wonderful time at the Villa. Lots of space for all of us and so central for exploring the area. It is a lovely place. Thank you for arranging Donatella for us. She cooked delicious Tuscan meals for us and also invited us to her home and to friends. What a gem! Donatella and Sonia really enhanced our stay and expanded our Italian experience...The Best

We would like to say “thank you” for the wonderful stay at the villa Pianella from 23 – 30 July. We and our 3 children + partners + 6 grandchildren had a wonderful time at the villa. There are hardly any words to describe the “Pianella experience”. We all enjoyed swimming in the swimming pool with the most stunning view of Tuscany. It was very convenient that we could stock our drinks in the fridge there. We played many family tournaments at the tennis court, even the smallest children wanted to particpiate in them. The kitchen is everything a good cook could wish for. There are some good cooks in our family and we enjoyed cooking the most delicious meals. The grandchildren had much fun helping to make pizzas. The villa is beautifully situated on the mountain, and we all remember the evenings with the sun setting, while we were having our dinner. We regretted that we could not stay longer, and we highly recommend your house.

"La pianella is a truly magical place, perfect for experiencing the Italian way of life. We stayed for a week in September 2011 to celebrate our marriage with close family and friends, in what was the most amazing time of our lives. The villa is perfect for large groups of able bodied adults and small children. There were 18 of us, aged between 1 and 68 years old, yet the house never felt crowded. The pool area is great, plenty of space in and out of the water for all the group and THE most wonderful views over beautiful Tuscan countryside. At night we would sit around the long table on the terrace while the children played on the lawn, enjoying delicious food made with fresh local ingredients and, of course, sampling the beautiful local wine. On our wedding day, we had an extra 16 guests that were easily accommodated on the huge terrace. The caterers' at our reception utilised the pizza oven and I can safely say that we ate the best pizza any of us had ever tasted! We feel truly fortunate to have come across this precious gem in the middle of the Tuscan countryside as no other place would have given us such magnificent memories against a breathtaking backdrop. Prior to, and during, our stay the owner and key holder could not have been more hospitable. We took a huge leap of faith in booking the villa for our wedding day having not viewed the property in person. They answered any queries we had really quickly and could not have done enough to help. We cannot wait to return"

Dear Clare We had a super time in La Pianella! There were 14 of us for the week, which essentially was my husbands mum and dad, 2 brothers, sisters in law and kids. My sister and 3 of her kids joined us for 2 nights so we had a full compliment of 18 those days! We all absolutely loved the house. The space was fantastic and worked really well for us. The fact that the bedrooms were located in different areas around the house was also ideal and we were able to allocate them really suitably between families/little kids/bigger kids etc which worked well for bedtimes/noise etc. Thanks so much for the room plan you provided in advance and apologies for all the trouble your friend went to do it, but it turned out to be invaluable as we had a much better sense of layout and could plan the room allocations much better before we got there and avert any difficulties! The pool and area around it are spectacular! We were all stunned by its size and really loved it and spent most of our time up there. While the steps up were possibly initially a bit daunting we all got very good at them and even granny, grandad and all the kids were fine on them (bar the baby and the hill was a bit of a struggle with the pram but we managed!). We had Donatella and Sonia come in 4 of the evenings which was fantastic. They are both so lovely and a pleasure to be around. It was lovely also to experience real local cuisine and such a treat to essentially be waited on and not have to do the wash-up afterwards! The other nights we cooked (once!), BBQ'd and did the pizza thing (which was great fun but we will never get jobs in pizzerias!). Tina and Enzo were also both lovely and looked after the house, gardens and pool very well. We had great fun with the tennis and ping pong and ran a few challenges which kept us entertaining before dinner most evenings! All in all we had a super time and one which will be remembered for many years to come. Many thanks Anna and family

What a delightful place. It accommodated my entire family - all 17 of us from 1 yr. old to 75!! The children were intrigued by all the wild life - lizards, scorpions, bats etc... The pool & tennis court were in constant use. Ball hunting was a popular game with the children after a game! We counted 116 steps to the pool! Kept us all fit! Perfect weather, good walks, on small tracks. Accompanied by the constant accompaniment of the crickets and in the evening when we dined, it was the cicadas. Donatella was the perfect chef together with her assistants Sonia & Mattina. We made full use of the pizza oven one day. Altogether a delightful holiday with my family in superb surroundings.

Lovely weeks stay, despite very angry thunderstorm on the first night & the 160 odd steps to the pool! Ate far too much - would recommend Gina's 5 mins. away and restaurant LEO in Lucca. Forte di Marmi market on Weds. was great for beautiful cashmere & handbags - but go early!

The house is a truly enchanted place. Lovely rooms, beautiful garden, in a superb environment. Pizza with Donatella & Sonia was great fun (and yummy!) We did not feel the need to explore Tuscany any further...this is it! This place has everything.

We would highly recommend the beautiful La Pianella Villa. Our extended family (6 adults, 8 children ages 6 - 14) spent a wonderful week at the Villa this summer. The Villa and surrounding grounds were exceptionally clean and well maintained. The grounds around the Villa were filled with beautiful plants and flowers. The location provided beautiful views of the surrounding areas. There were many activities at the Villa to keep everyone happy, between the pool, tennis courts, ping pong table and several beautiful patios (also TV and books inside). We had to force ourselves to leave the Villa during the week for a few lovely day trips. Luca, Pisa, Florence and beautiful beaches were all easily accessible for day trips. Clare and Mary-Ann were wonderful in helping us arrange our visit and answering any questions we had. They checked in on us during our stay to make sure everything was going well. There was also a lots of helpful information at the Villa regarding grocery stores, pharmacies, restaurants and local attractions. They even provided a number for an English speaking doctor, which we needed during our stay. A highlight of our visit was the wonderful cooking provided by Donatella and her daughter Sonia. We cannot say enough kind words about their wonderful cooking and kindness to our family! Thank you very much to Clare and Mary-Ann for sharing their beautiful Villa with our family. And many thanks to Donatella and Sonia for sharing their wonderful food. We travel with our extended family every summer, but I don't think we will ever top our amazing week at La Pianella!

What a beautiful house, we had a really good time! Thank you for a perfect holiday!

“IDYLLIC TUSCANY” 5 of 5 stars Reviewed July 15, 2014 for a stay in July 2014 We were a large family group of 16 celebrating some big birthdays. A big mixture of ages - 5 months to 70! A great rustic property high in the valley with spectacular views. The property suited us perfectly. Masses of space with bathrooms for everyone. Don't expect contemporary chic, this is a rustic farmhouse type style which felt cosy and comfortable.. We LOVED the tennis court, big pool - even further up the valley so lots of steps to get there...but the views..... table tennis - we were kept very busy. BEST OF ALL WAS PROBABLY THE WONDERFUL DONATELLA who came in to cook for us and babysit on quite a few occasions. Eating out on the Terrace with everything prepared and cleared away - some great family evenings with lots of noise and no-one to disturb! Easy journey from Pisa - just over an hour to Florence. Great taxi service from Andrea whenever we needed him. We should have spent more time in the lovely walled city of Lucca English speaking Doctor - we went to his surgery in Lucca with a couple of hours notice as one party member had left all his medications behind - we were charged 69CENTS!!!! Take your European health card! Be ready for the final windy road to the house - first time is a bit of a surprise but when you get there.....WOW! Very friendly, helpful pro-active owners- THANK YOU FOR A VERY HAPPY MEMORABLE STAY.

For a family reunion we have stayed at villa La Pianella with 12 adults and 6 children. La Pianella is perfect for this occasion. It breathes a very welcome and relaxing atmosphere for everyone. The kitchen is excellent and very complete! Spacious and clean are the bedrooms and most of them have their own bathroom. Even the cut-flowers in the house are refreshed during the week. The garden and tennis court surroundings are very beautiful i.e. the wisteria in the tree and the wild flowers on the hill. For some of our family the first ride to the villa by car/camper was a thrill. The villa and facilities were the reason we’ve spent most of our holiday in and round the house. The tennis court was used intensively. We did go to Pisa via back roads and to Lucca for some culture and shopping. At Pasticceria Dolcevita we have bought delicious birthday cakes. At the villa we enjoyed most of our meals. The homemade pizza but also the dinner Donnatella prepared for us. She’s stunning indeed! We would love to come back to the villa for another reunion! Thank you very much Clare and Mary-Ann for giving us good care and memories.

Hello Clare, We're just home after the most fabulous three weeks in Lucca. The party was a huge success and the location was just glorious. It's the absolute perfect place for a large gathering of people. I thought I might try and write an article about it for a newspaper as there must be hundreds of people out there looking for the perfect venue for other such gatherings. The combination of the Farmhouse (which is just to die for by the way) and the Villa works so well. For the main party we had drinks down at the F pool and then wandered up to the Villa where we had the long table covered in candles. It looked spectacular and Donatella is a genius. She just takes on board immediately what you want and then produces it without any fuss. She's lovely and I think the women were equally as smitten as the men! Andrea also proved invaluable in his various roles. We managed to get 45 of our good friends there for what was a very memorable occasion and it now seems very sad that we've left them and Pianella all behind.. Thank you to you for what was a really fabulous two weeks there. We're hugely envious that you're able to pop over there so frequently and absorb all that beauty and serenity. Much love and a big thank you for making such a special place available to us. Margaret xx